Young Noble Be Monster Slaying
Chapter 936: Conquering Oneself

At the same time, the Whale-Riding Immortal let out a long sigh as he stared at his mirror image.

The good news was that he had already reached the peak of the eighth realm and had fully comprehended his own Great Dao. In terms of cultivation, he wasn’t at a disadvantage.

The bad news was that his cultivation of this Great Dao had reached the pinnacle, allowing him to copy other people's abilities. The mirror image possessed the exact same ability.

Even before the fight started, he could already tell that it was going to be extremely exhausting.

The thought of summoning the Vessel of God from Mount Shu to crush his opponent outright had crossed his mind a thousand times. But in the end, he held back. Unless absolutely necessary, there was no reason to rely on the power of a legendary artifact.

The mirror image stood motionless, simply watching the Whale-Riding Immortal without making a move. Neither side appeared willing to strike first.

After a long pause, it was the real Whale-Riding Immortal who finally acted. He swiftly formed a series of hand seals, and the waterfalls around him roared to life. They surged upward, twisting into flood dragons that lunged toward the mirror image.

But the mirror image responded with the same exact move. It performed the same hand seals, and an identical number of flood dragons rose into the air, clashing head-on with their counterparts in mid-flight.

In a flash, the Whale-Riding Immortal appeared right before the mirror image. He brought his palm up and slammed it down!

Boooooom!

The mirror image mirrored the exact same motion, and their palms collided in midair. The burst of power was evenly matched, sending both figures flying backward more than a hundred zhang.

The Whale-Riding Immortal gritted his teeth and raised two fingers vertically in front of his chest. A flash of divine light burst from his eyes, and a ten-zhang-tall projection suddenly rose behind him. Like a phantom, the towering apparition mirrored his hand seals in midair, stirring the wind and clouds into chaos.

In the span of a single breath, the apparition behind him unleashed over a hundred divine techniques and immortal arts. No human could physically endure such rapid channeling of power from the heavens and the earth, which was why the Whale-Riding Immortal had to rely on the apparition he had summoned. And the moment the final technique was cast, the towering figure shattered with a thunderous crash.

But at the same time, the mirror image followed through with the exact same series of movements, down to the last gesture!

With two earthshaking booms, both apparitions shattered at once. The two hundred divine techniques and immortal arts collided in midair with overwhelming force. Stealth spells of the five elements, deceptive curse arts, and waves of sword qi all slammed into one another, shaking the very fabric of the void.

The Whale-Riding Immortal didn’t wait for the dust to settle. He soared forward once more and struck out with a direct palm.

Boooooooooom!

Their palms collided again. This time, the Whale-Riding Immortal held his ground, while the mirror image suddenly staggered back.

“Heh,” the Whale-Riding Immortal chuckled. “You can copy my face, and even the Great Dao I command… but in the end, you can’t replicate everything I carry.”

With his left hand, he drew out a spirit plant, crushed it, and drank the stream of golden liquid that flowed from it. A powerful surge of spiritual energy instantly coursed through his body.

As it turned out, he had known from the start that the mirror image could unleash the same divine techniques. Even so, he had chosen to press forward, because his true goal was to exhaust the mirror image’s spiritual energy in a single instant. Over the years, he had traveled far and wide, gathering a wealth of spirit plants. These items were something the mirror image could never copy.

Now, the strength of this mirror image has reached its limit.

Boooooooooooom!

With one final palm strike, the Whale-Riding Immortal shattered the mirror image, scattering it into a curtain of water that rained down from the sky.

As the last droplets faded, a beam of light appeared ahead, forming what looked like an open doorway. The Whale-Riding Immortal stepped through it and found a broad-shouldered figure standing just beyond, as if waiting for someone.

"Erniu?" he called out in surprise.

He had moved so swiftly, yet the first one to emerge was still the Sword Emperor of the West Sea?

The Sword Emperor turned around and let out a chuckle. “You made it out?”

He had truly lucked out with this checkpoint. Having once reached the eighth realm, he understood the Great Dao at the level of a master of Heavenly Origin. This was why Dao Masters who had lost control of their Great Dao would still be stronger than those at the seventh realm. Their understanding of the Great Dao was far deeper than anything else and this level of understanding was something that a cultivator at the Dao Attainment Realm could match.

What others saw as the strength of the mirror image became a weakness when facing him. Although the mirror image shared the same level of cultivation, it lacked his depth of understanding in the Great Dao. And so, when Chen Erniu was faced with a weakened version of himself, he was genuinely surprised.

He simply hadn’t expected the first two checkpoints to be so difficult, only for this one to be... just that? And so, he dealt with his mirror image with ease and arrived here early to wait.

The Whale-Riding Immortal smiled as he offered a rare word of praise. “You were quick.”

After thinking it over for a moment, he realized why the Sword Emperor had passed this checkpoint so quickly.

Throughout this journey, the Sword Emperor had rarely received praise. So when he heard those unexpected words, he immediately wiped the smile from his face. He smoothed back his hair, turned around, stomped once, and replied in a cold and aloof tone, “It’s nothing worth mentioning.”

…

As Jiang Yuebai faced her mirror image, she raised a hand and activated the Ten Thousand Swords Seal.

In an instant, a sea of sword qi surged across the sky.

Both sides executed nearly the same techniques. Each strand of Jiang Yuebai's Cloud of Determination sword qi was intercepted by a matching strike from the mirror image. Yet, the mirror image wielded sword qi with even greater precision, always targeting the weakest point in her attacks with uncanny accuracy.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whooooooooooooosh!

After several fierce clashes of sword qi, Jiang Yuebai stopped relying solely on her sword techniques. She began using stealth traversal arts of the five elements as she tried to find a weak point in the mirror image's attacks. However, the mirror image understood her divine techniques to their core, countering each maneuver with unerring precision.

Jiang Yuebai touched down where she had started, standing quietly atop the water as she locked eyes with her mirror image.

She no longer rushed to break through the checkpoint. Instead, she began studying herself from the enemy’s perspective. After all, this might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Ever since Chu Liang’s return, his cultivation had soared as if he had grown wings. His breakthrough at the Heavenly Gate had surpassed even the progress he made at the Earthly Gate, completely erasing six years of disparity. He had even pulled ahead of his peers by more than sixty years’ worth of advancement.

Jiang Yuebai had reached the seventh realm earlier than most prodigies of her generation. Yet among the four selected for this Divine Ruins expedition, she had unexpectedly become the weakest link.

She had always been proud and ambitious. Though she never said it aloud, she found it difficult to accept and had been quietly working to grow stronger. But at the bottleneck of the seventh realm, diligence alone was no longer enough. Without fresh insight into her Great Dao, progress was nearly impossible.

And right now, this was the perfect opportunity to reflect on herself.

As she studied the mirror image’s every move, Jiang Yuebai began to realize that she had become overly reliant on divine techniques and skills.

Her Transcendent Spirit constitution allowed her to comprehend a Great Dao more easily and cultivate immortal arts with less effort. Because of this, she had mastered far more divine techniques than her peers.

Even after advancing to the seventh realm, her fighting style remained centered around these divine abilities.

But in truth, the foundation of the Heavenly Gate realm was mastery of a Great Dao. That was where true strength lay, and it was something she had neglected.

Jiang Yuebai slowly closed her eyes, allowing herself to sink into the Dao essence of the Cloud of Determination that flowed through heaven and earth. In that stillness, she began to reclaim the Sword Dao forged from unwavering resolve.

In the face of life and death, all that remains is a single sword.

Cut through the drifting clouds with a single strike!

That was the true meaning of Cloud of Determination.

Her mirror image seemed to sense what she was doing. Was she attempting a breakthrough in the middle of the fight?

The mirror image had no such ability. All it could do was leap into the air and thrust its sword at Jiang Yuebai, hoping to interrupt her state of enlightenment before she grew stronger.

But suddenly, Jiang Yuebai opened her eyes.

The Sword Dao was just like her journey to save her mother. She could only move forward and never backward. No matter what hardships lay ahead, she had to press on with unwavering resolve.

It was a path of certain death with no hope of survival!

A lonely, fierce will lit up in her eyes. The longsword in her right hand rang sharply in midair. It was the treasured blade Chu Liang had retrieved for her from the Heavenly Palace in the Sword Domain, a sword that could rival Xiaoyun.

In the next instant, two brilliant sword lights collided!

Boom!

A cascade of waterlight burst across the sky.

…

Meanwhile, on Chu Liang’s side:

After failing to gain the upper hand in their initial clash, Chu Liang appeared to be at a disadvantage. The situation looked thoroughly unfavorable.

His mirror image floated in midair like a celestial god, surrounded by thrashing chains of yang lightning. Dazzling divine light rumbled through the air as bolts of lightning chased Chu Liang from all sides, forcing him to dodge left and right. He seemed to be in grave danger.

Whenever he tried to close the distance, the mirror image would use both martial arts and the power of yang lightning to launch an immediate counterattack.

With the upper hand in both offense and defense, the mirror image forced Chu Liang into a constant retreat. But as the battle wore on, something began to shift. Every so often, he retaliated with a blast of divine lightning, each strike crackling through the air with terrifying might.

Before long, Chu Liang rose into the air too, sending out streaks of divine lightning to fight against the mirror image’s net of lightning chains. With the Dragon God’s Orb boosting his power, his spiritual energy grew stronger, and he slowly started to gain the upper hand.

Only then did the mirror image sense that something was amiss. It abruptly pulled back and asked, “Are you copying me?”

Chu Liang gave a nonchalant shrug. “How shameless. You copied everything about me, and I’m not even allowed to borrow a move or two?”

As it turned out, the moment Chu Liang realized his mirror image held the advantage, a thought had crossed his mind.

He hadn’t put in the time or effort to fully study the Great Dao of Divine Clouds. It was the Large-Headed Doll who had figured it out and passed it on to him. Even though Chu Liang had the power of someone at the eighth realm, he was still using skills from the seventh realm. What he lacked wasn’t strength, but a proper understanding of how to use it.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to study the Great Dao. Part of the reason was that he hadn’t had enough time. But more importantly, the person who had mastered the Great Dao of Divine Clouds had died a long time ago, and he had literally no one to teach him. The Great Dao of the Lightning Serpent might have had similar traits, but its master followed the path of yin lightning and wouldn’t know the secrets of using yang lightning in the Great Dao of Divine Clouds.

But now, the mirror image had appeared in front of him like a gift from the heavens. Chu Liang immediately started watching carefully, studying how it used the Great Dao of Divine Clouds during battle.

Since you’ve been showing off in front of me all this time, did you really think I wouldn’t take the chance to learn a few tricks?