The Shining Star Above The Heaven-Chapter 605: The End of the Battle?

Once the sword met the head of Zhang Haoran’s avatar, he immediately felt shaken as the full force of the giant sword was also transmitted to him. His soul trembled violently, since the avatar technique had a strong connection to the cultivator’s soul. Before long, he spat out a mouthful of blood.

Sprut!

Blood splashed as his avatar began to fall, the massive sword forcing it down. He tried to remain airborne and attempted to push the sword away, but the direct impact on his avatar had already caused serious damage to his soul. He couldn’t fully concentrate on controlling it anymore, as the sword’s power kept inflicting continuous damage.

And then, two seconds later—

Crack! Crack! Clang!

Zhang Haoran’s avatar’s head shattered, followed by the collapse of its entire body. Zhang Haoran kept vomiting blood as he fell from the sky, and finally—

Boom!

His body was thrown to the ground like a projectile, crashing down with a deafening impact after his avatar was destroyed. The sudden strike and the direct hit from the massive sword, empowered by Aldrian’s entire domain, had left him severely injured.

He truly felt stupid, having still been caught off guard despite all his preparation.

Zhang Haoran’s thoughts slipped for a moment, he had already accepted that Aldrian was a god, yet in the heat of battle, he miscalculated. He kept thinking inside the box, still applying the rules of battle between mortal cultivators. It was understandable. After all, he had never fought a god before, and there were too many possibilities he couldn’t predict.

He did not expect Aldrian to have the capability to teleport while using an avatar technique of that scale. He had assumed that to control and move such a massive avatar, Aldrian would need to focus entirely on channeling his energy to maintain its form and motion.

After all, maintaining an avatar of that size should have placed a tremendous toll on the user, and teleporting the entire avatar should have been impossible, doing so would normally cause the avatar’s form to collapse.

That was his mistake.

He had continued to apply mortal rules to Aldrian, and now he was paying the price.

When his body struck the ground, the impact shattered the earth beneath him and left a crater in its wake.

Although his body was protected by a high-grade divine armor artifact, his soul had taken severe damage. And that was the worst part. He was still in the midst of battle, and damage to the soul would leave him dangerously vulnerable.

However, having prepared for the worst, he had already accounted for a situation like this. He possessed another one time card, that could heal any injury in his body and soul as long as he was still alive. He was about to command the system to activate it, but before he could speak—

Grab!

Aldrian grabbed hold of his head. His avatar technique had already been cancelled, and in the next instant, Aldrian injected his golden energy that now already altered with poisonous properties, directly into Zhang Haoran.

Alongside it, he unleashed a strand of lightning, aiming to inflict even greater damage to the soul.

In Aldrian’s mind, Zhang Haoran’s soul had to be exceptionally strong, having touched the Pseudo-Immortal Foundation Realm.

That soul’s strength, he believed, should be enough to withstand this much pain.

Zhang Haoran, already wracked with unbearable pain, felt as if his head would burst from the surge of Aldrian’s golden energy and lightning forced into him.

"Warning, warning, the host’s life is in danger. Warning, warning, the host’s life is in danger."The system’s voice rang in Zhang Haoran’s mind, but he could not comprehend it. The pain in his head was overwhelming, so intense that he could no longer grasp anything around him.

"No, I need to stay awake! I need to stay awake!"

"My revenge—"

His vision suddenly went black. The unbearable pain tearing through his soul was too much. With his soul already wounded, the combined assault of golden energy and lightning laws had pushed him past his limit. He could no longer maintain his consciousness.

The fact that he had managed to stay conscious even for a few seconds was already a remarkable feat, one that left Aldrian quietly impressed by the soul strength of someone who had reached the Pseudo-Immortal Foundation Realm.

Still holding Zhang Haoran’s head, Aldrian made sure he had truly lost consciousness.

He waited for a full minute before slowly releasing his grip. His gaze remained fixed on Zhang Haoran’s head and body, his senses focused entirely on him and the surrounding environment—watching for any possible trick.

Once he was certain that Zhang Haoran had truly lost consciousness and wasn’t faking it, he sat down beside him, letting his body slump slightly. He took a deep breath and exhaled, his eyes still on Zhang Haoran.

This battle had been truly challenging and tense. It was very different from his fight with Cardinal Carsius. Although he had been injured in that battle, this one was even more challenging. It was a true battle of strategy and power, and even without suffering any injuries, it had pushed him far harder.

When he fought Cardinal Carsius, he still had a trump card—his full domain’s strength at the time.

However, against Zhang Haoran, he had to unleash the full power of his domain from the very beginning. Throughout the battle, he had mostly maintained that level of power, and even then, he was unable to defeat Zhang Haoran overwhelmingly.

Zhang Haoran was truly a clever fighter. He could take advantage of every detail in the battlefield and adapt quickly to turn situations in his favor.

For example, when he targeted Aldrian’s sword with the intent to break it, the momentum, which had previously been in Aldrian’s favor, shifted. Aldrian was forced into a passive position and could only defend for a time.

Combined with Zhang Haoran’s comprehension of many laws, he became as slippery as an eel every time Aldrian’s attack nearly landed.

When Aldrian read his information, he couldn’t help but feel astonished by the number of techniques and laws Zhang Haoran had comprehended.

It was the longest information he had ever seen from any cultivator he had looked into.

Zhang Haoran had mastered the four basic elements, along with seven more special elements, such as space, time, and curse—and over twenty techniques, including summoning, domain, avatar, and many others.

At one point, Zhang Haoran used his time laws to slow the surrounding space for a second, just enough to evade Aldrian’s strike. Aldrian, who also comprehended time laws, recognized it immediately and knew he would need to be more creative if he wanted to land a direct hit.

What gave him the edge, however, was an ability Zhang Haoran had not fully realized—his domain.

Aldrian took full advantage of that ignorance.

He used the spatial barrier he had created across the surface of his domain to prevent Zhang Haoran from escaping. He lured him toward the edge, and Zhang Haoran, unaware that he was already inside the domain and unable to detect the hidden spatial barrier, crashed into it. That brief moment was enough for Aldrian to strike back.

Even so, the moment Zhang Haoran cast that curse was truly dangerous. Aldrian had been completely vulnerable for an instant. Unfortunately for Zhang Haoran, Aldrian’s golden energy was a natural bane to any kind of curse. Although the curse attempted to seal his dantian, it had no chance of completely suppressing the source where his golden energy was concentrated.

Forget about his dantian, even all of his meridians were filled with golden energy.

Fueled by rage after seeing the illusion, he forcefully shattered the curse.

He burst forth with energy, unleashing the full power of his domain to crush the curse and activate his avatar technique, for the first time ever.

He had actually created this avatar technique during the journey to this place. While resting along the way, he had taken the time to prepare himself further for the battle against the Devil Lord, adding a new technique to his arsenal.

Although he already had a trump card like Slash of the End, he still wanted to include an avatar technique to strengthen his overall power.

However, there was a moment when he felt slightly anxious, when Zhang Haoran managed to break through to the Pseudo-Immortal Foundation Realm. He knew that, as of now, the full power of his domain might only reach that level. The power of the Pseudo-Immortal Foundation was not something to be underestimated, as he had just experienced firsthand.

He was already using the full power of his domain, and it was enough to match Zhang Haoran during their exchange with avatars. But what would come next? Zhang Haoran might still have even more powerful techniques, and he hadn’t activated his domain at all since the beginning, which Aldrian could already guess the reason for.

A domain was a technique that consumed a great deal of energy. Zhang Haoran clearly didn’t want to use it recklessly while facing him. He was still observing, still evaluating Aldrian’s strength and abilities, waiting for the right moment to activate it.

Aldrian knew that after their clash using avatars, Zhang Haoran would likely bring out his domain in an attempt to overpower him. If Zhang Haoran possessed even stronger attack techniques and chose that moment to activate his domain as well, then there would be no way for Aldrian to block all of it.

He might have to use Slash of the End, and even then, he wasn’t confident it would be enough. He didn’t know the true limits of Zhang Haoran’s power after reaching the Pseudo-Immortal Foundation Realm and using all his cards.

That was why he used another trick to strike before Zhang Haoran could go all out. That trick was the teleportation ability of his domain.

Zhang Haoran would never expect the massive avatar to teleport directly in front of him and launch an immediate attack. It was a surprise that left him no time to react, and fortunately, the plan worked.

He had also prevented Zhang Haoran from healing through his system. He had seen, when reading Zhang Haoran’s information before the battle, that he possessed something capable of instantly healing all his wounds.

Aldrian took a deep breath before moving closer to Zhang Haoran’s head.

It was time to look into his memories.

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