Chapter 692: Dual Dharma Manifestation

A piercing alarm instantly swept through the entire border legion.

Inside the headquarters control center, numerous on-duty commanders jolted awake from their dormant states.

A dozen seconds later, intelligence verification was complete, and the alert level was raised directly to the highest.

The border fleet stationed at the plane activated in full force.

The energy cores of warship after warship switched from standby to full-power operation. Blue-white propulsion flames lit up one after another across the dark cosmos. One hundred and twenty seconds later.

The fleet completed its transition preparations.

The commander stared at the madly flashing red dot on the main screen and issued a cold order:

“All fleet vessels, transition to the target coordinates.”

“Upon discovering the target, no warning is needed—open fire immediately!”

In orbit, hundreds of warships, under coordinated regulation, activated the flagship’s spatial jump engines.

Blue transition radiance rose and fell in succession across the fleet formation, like a string of cold flames suddenly ignited.

In the next instant, warship after warship vanished from their original positions, then re-condensed into form near the target coordinates after crossing the void.

Before the hulls had fully stabilized, the tentacle trees on the bridges had already clearly seen the scene ahead.

Then, everyone froze.

Outside the plane barrier, a dark-gold giant nearly a thousand meters tall was plunging both hands deep into the barrier’s surface layer.

With every exertion of force, the energy arcs bursting from between its fingers were shockingly long—several degrees more exaggerated than even their largest capital ships.

Those arcs rampaged and leaped through the void, causing the entire starfield to flicker unstably. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The giant had two faces, one on the front of its head and one on the back.

The front face was refined and calm, its three golden vertical pupils as steady as precision instruments; the back face had hard, resolute contours, its gaze cold and carrying an overwhelming, crushing pressure.

The vertical eyes at the brow of both faces opened and closed slightly at the same time. Golden light beams swept straight across the fleet formation like two searchlight spears spanning the universe. The tree bark on the fleet commander’s back shook violently, shedding a layer of fine debris.

There was no need for the warships’ detectors to return readings. Simply seeing the giant tear a person-wide gap in the plane barrier with its own power was enough to explain everything.

Watching the plane barrier’s fissure continue to widen, fear wrapped around his torso like icy vines.

“Open fire! All ships, open fire!”

He vibrated the order with nearly all his strength.

The main cannons of hundreds of warships lit up simultaneously.

In the next instant, energy beams and electromagnetic shells wove into an airtight net of firepower, tearing through the void, piercing the plane barrier, and pouring toward the dark-gold giant.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The moment the first volley penetrated the barrier, dozens of incandescent white impact flares exploded across its surface.

Explosive firelight and thick smoke instantly swallowed the view, and even the void trembled.

The commander gripped the edge of the control console tightly, his tentacles straining to the point of spasm.

He didn’t even dare blink.

Only when the observation team’s real-time scan data arrived did he feel as if a basin of cold water had been poured over his head.

All attacks had been firmly caught by a blue, semi-transparent shield several kilometers away from the target.

From the feedback, every single attack had completely failed.

“How is this possible…”

The commander murmured, his crystal eyes contracting violently.

A few seconds earlier, Jie Ming had finally torn open a finger-wide fissure in the rear barrier through his own efforts.

But at the same time, on the other side of the plane barrier, visible spatial fluctuations appeared in the dark cosmos, distorting the starlight behind them.

Knowing that the other side had discovered his actions, Jie Ming couldn’t help but frown as he looked at the fissure before him—too narrow even for his own hand to pass through. If he wanted to continue widening the crack under these circumstances, he would have no choice but to endure the attacks.

Although other sixth-ring wizards had also directly tanked this stage, Jie Ming had no intention of taking a beating for nothing. Fortunately, he did have something on hand capable of handling the current situation.

A small gap opened gently in the inner world within his body.

In the next moment, the Nest flew out.

Its initial form resembled a small blue lake, its gelatinous body slowly unfurling in the void.

But in merely an instant, it completed its morphological shift.

The entire lake-like body stretched into a massive thin membrane, sliding like water into the fissure torn open by Jie Ming’s true body. Leveraging its slime-like structure, the Nest passed through the extremely narrow gap silently and re-condensed inside the barrier.

By the time the border fleet’s firepower bombarded the front of the fissure, the Nest had already firmly positioned itself at the forefront.

It spread out, transforming into a thin blue shield covering the outer edge of the plane fissure torn by Jie Ming.

As a quasi-seventh-rank unit with extremely high limits, even though the Nest’s current combat strength had not reached its theoretical peak, as a destruction-type unit specialized in defense, it was not something ordinary attacks could pierce.

Energy beams landing on it were like water droplets falling into parched sand, swallowed without a trace in an instant.

Electromagnetic shells came roaring in; the high-speed rotating metal projectiles were decomposed into information state upon contact with the gelatinous surface, then re-woven and integrated into the Nest’s own structural units.

Absorption.

Conversion.

Then proliferation.

The Nest’s body began to grow at a visible speed.

Every attack the fleet poured down was digested by it into nourishment for itself.

The blue shield not only did not thin out, but grew increasingly thicker, its edges continuously expanding outward.

After enduring just a few volleys, it had grown a full size larger than when it first flew out of the inner world.

The fleet commander watched the continuously surging blue target on the detector. The fear in his crystal eyes finally overwhelmed duty.

His tentacles trembled as he sent an emergency communication.

“Calling headquarters—border fleet firepower completely ineffective… repeat, completely ineffective!”

“The target possesses some kind of defensive unit that absorbs energy attacks. Our attacks are not suppressing it… we are feeding it!”

The other end fell silent for a moment.

Then, a higher-authority voice joined the channel.

“Orders received. Headquarters is currently…”

Before the other party could finish, a low, heavy rumble sounded in the communication.

It was not a communication failure.

It was the sound of spatial structure tearing, coming from the other side of the plane barrier.

At the same time, outside the plane barrier.

Jie Ming had already plunged both hands fully into the barrier’s structure.

He took a deep breath.

Then, he mobilized the power of his entire body.

True body power converged into a vast torrent in the same instant, exerting force simultaneously on both sides.

The fissure was violently pried open.

Ten meters.

A hundred meters.

Expand further outward!

The originally narrow gap that could only allow partial passage rapidly widened until it was large enough for a several-hundred-meter-tall sixth-rank black giant to pass in single file. Yet for a hundred-billion-strong legion, this width was still insufficient.

Jie Ming did not stop.

To him, that small fissure earlier had merely been a warm-up.

And at this moment, a long-dormant technique was slowly awakening.

After reaching the Dao Integration Realm, a cultivator’s combat strength improvement usually followed a highly unified path: continuously delving deeper into their own Dao.

Once their understanding of their own path reached a certain level, they could perform further transformations based on the methods chosen during the Void Refinement Realm. During his Void Refinement Realm, Jie Ming had cultivated the *Ultra True Body Sutra*, which followed the Dharma Manifestation path.

At that time, his main body had been less than two meters tall.

By the late Void Refinement Realm, his Dharma Manifestation had fully solidified, fused with his flesh body, and ultimately transformed into the current thousand-meter true body.

And now.

His Dao Integration Realm had stabilized, and his comprehension of his own path was deep enough.

He had finally met the conditions to begin a second “transformation.”

In simple terms, he could once again cultivate Dharma Manifestation techniques on the foundation of his current true body and unfold a new Dharma Manifestation.

This was the so-called… [Dual Dharma Manifestation]!

When he first cultivated a Dharma Manifestation, his main body had been under two meters, yet the manifestation reached a thousand meters.

Now, his true body was already a thousand meters tall.

The Dharma Manifestation was the projection of the true body, the external manifestation of power and laws.

Therefore, the size of the Dharma Manifestation would scale proportionally with the size of the true body.

Behind Jie Ming, dark-gold radiance began to coalesce.

Before the Dharma Manifestation had even fully taken shape, it caused the elements in the void to erupt into complete turmoil.

The four major elements, the incense fire of the Infernal Sulfur Plane, and even the stellar radiance from the distant tentacle tree homeworld all bent and converged behind him.

Then, the outline began to appear.

First the head.

Then the neck.

Followed by the shoulders, torso, arms…

From a distance, it was as if another sky was slowly descending behind him.

It was a golden giant phantom exceeding five hundred kilometers in height.

Its outline was not yet fully clear, its details still coalescing. The boundaries of muscle and bone flickered in and out within the semi-transparent golden light.

Even so, the Dharma Manifestation already radiated light capable of eclipsing stars.

Jie Ming’s thousand-meter true body stood at the exact center of the Dharma Manifestation’s chest. Compared to it, he was minuscule—like a faint gleam embedded in the heart of a colossal statue. The Dharma Manifestation’s face was identical to the refined face on the front of his true body.

Only magnified hundreds of times over.

The vertical eye at its brow opened and closed slightly. Even at less than half its full aperture, the golden light it emitted had already turned most of the void ahead into broad daylight.

Inside the Infernal Sulfur Plane, Viola stood high in the main control room, arms crossed, looking up at the sky.

Through the spatial fissure, the five-hundred-kilometer-tall golden phantom was so clear it was nearly blinding.

Her pale green eyes reflected that golden radiance. She blinked, and a faint, ambiguous smile slowly curved her lips.

“Impressive!”

She murmured to herself, her tone carrying a rare trace of surprise.

“Junior brother’s three hundred years of closed-door cultivation results are truly…”

Halfway through her words, she raised a hand to touch the corner of her lips, as if suddenly thinking of something. The smile in her eyes deepened.

“Tsk, there’ll be a good show when the old man comes out.”

Inside the plane barrier, the fleet commander’s tree bark was no longer merely trembling.

He stared fixedly at the energy readings on the detector that had surged to near distortion. His tentacles froze on the controls; he no longer had the strength to issue commands. The curve on the main screen skyrocketed from high sixth-rank without the slightest pause.

Faster and faster. Higher and higher.

Until it completely exceeded the measurement table’s maximum range.

Warning markers flashed madly at the edges of the screen. Detection equipment emitted a shrill, ear-piercing wail, then overloaded completely.

A wisp of green smoke slowly rose from the seams in the detector’s casing.

“Accelerate…!”

The commander’s orders had begun to break off, his tentacle strikes carrying near-collapse tremors.

“Accelerate ultimate weapon charging! Now! Immediately!”

“Never mind the safety thresholds—skip the third-stage cooldown! I’ll take responsibility for all consequences!!”

The remaining warships of the border fleet continued firing futilely.

Yet their cannon fire landing on the Nest no longer even left any visible impact traces.

The Nest had absorbed too much energy. Its body had swollen to several times its size when it first emerged from the inner world.

The blue gelatinous surface flowed with residual glow from the devoured attacks, forming an unbreakable blue high wall in front of the plane fissure.

And at that moment, the Dual Dharma Manifestation behind Jie Ming slowly raised its hands.

Those palms were already too vast to measure by ordinary scales.

Each hand was like a moving city.

Elemental turbulence in the void was stirred into massive vortices at the edges of the palms. The vortex rims trailed broken arcs of electricity, stretching from warship-scale into thunderous torrents capable of engulfing half the fleet.

Then, those giant hands reached simultaneously into the fissure torn open by Jie Ming.

BOOM!!!

The structure of the plane barrier was forcibly pried wider.

The power released by the five-hundred-kilometer-tall Dharma Manifestation was no longer mere brute force.

It was power that Jie Ming had constructed using laws as leverage, the Incense Fire Divine Dao as fulcrum, and the Fate Subsystem as navigation.

With every inch a finger of the Dharma Manifestation advanced, the barrier structure at the stressed nodes would collapse layer by layer like dominoes.

The fissure expanded at a visible speed.

What had been a hundred meters moments ago became hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye.

Then thousands of meters, tens of thousands, over a hundred kilometers.

Irregular gaps were constantly torn at the fracture edges. Blue-white spatial arcs leaped wildly along the rims. Occasionally, a few arcs of light whipped into the black void, illuminating the entire distant fleet group with a single flash.

On the Infernal Sulfur Plane side, the black giant legion had already finished forming ranks.

A hundred billion black giants stood densely packed within the plane’s internal space, a vast black tide that filled the entire field of vision to the horizon.

Leading them was the seventh-rank black giant Molten Mountain, whose size far surpassed his kin.

His height of over ten thousand meters made him a full head taller than ordinary sixth-rank black giants. The black liquid metal on his body gleamed with a dark red luster under the light. But at this moment, even Molten Mountain felt his own insignificance while watching his master unfold the hundred-kilometer-scale Dharma Manifestation.

When the fissure had been pried open to several hundred kilometers wide, Jie Ming’s Dual Dharma Manifestation finally stopped tearing.

Those enormous palms steadily held the edges of the fissure, fixing the plane breach into a stable shape.

Stable golden light slowly seeped from the Dharma Manifestation’s palms into the surroundings of the breach, reinforcing the nodes at the fissure’s edges one by one, ultimately shaping it into a spatial passage wide enough for a hundred-billion-strong legion to pass through.

The vertical maw on Molten Mountain’s chest opened wide.

“ROAR!!!”

It was a pure elemental shockwave that pierced directly through the void and swept across the entire legion.

“ROAR!!!”

The hundred billion black giants responded in unison.

The earth-shaking war cries converged into a raging tide, causing the entire void to tremble faintly.

In the next moment, Molten Mountain raised his arm.

His massive black palm slashed downward viciously.

The hundred-billion-strong black giant legion launched its charge.