Blood Markings
Lu Yuan's lips curved into a faint smile.
He knew that spatial movement under the green dog's watchful gaze would be difficult — but within the Shadow Sacred Domain, the position swap between him and his Shadow Clones was something the green dog couldn't interfere with.
He had already placed several Shadow Clones at a distance beforehand. If danger arose, he could swap to any of them at any moment.
That was precisely how he'd caught the green dog so completely off guard.
He studied the heavily wounded creature and narrowed his eyes slightly. He found that his own strength was somewhat greater than he'd originally estimated.
Combat Techniques from entirely different domains, combined together, produced an enormous combat power.
And this green dog was almost certainly stronger than when Li Xinghai and the elders had encountered it before. At its current level, he doubted they could have inflicted injuries this severe on it — even with Saint-grade Talismans, it would have been no different.
Setting aside everything else, the green dog's sonic scream alone was beyond any Battle Emperor's capacity to endure. One scream, and a Battle Emperor would be left dead or crippled.
*Keep moving.*
Even as these thoughts ran through his head, Lu Yuan was already acting. He summoned a fresh wave of Shadow Clones and sent them charging at the green dog. At the same time, a ring of ashen, death-still light flickered to life in his eyes once more.
Above the heavily wounded green dog, a phantom gray hand materialized and raked downward.
The green dog, which had been frantically healing its wounds, convulsed violently all over and released an agonized shriek. The injuries that had partially closed burst open again, green blood gushing out in torrents, its aura collapsing into chaos.
More than that — a stench of rot now clung to its presence.
Hand of Death, applied to a creature already severely injured, was devastatingly effective.
The wave of Shadow Clones had already closed in. Blade after blade of starlit sword-light slashed outward, carving toward the green dog whose aura had guttered almost to nothing.
Hundreds of sword beams — their combined pressure was terrifying.
Just as the sword light neared the green dog, the creature suddenly let out a low growl. The eerie blood-red markings across its body blazed to life with crimson radiance, and even its green Scale Armor was washed over with a deep, vivid red.
Blood-light swirled and coiled, wrapping around the heavily wounded green dog — too injured to dodge — and sealing it inside a blood-red shell.
The sword light crashed into the crimson shell with a **boom**. The shell shuddered, fissures webbing across its surface — but it did not break.
Lu Yuan's brow drew tight. He commanded all his Shadow Clones, the six enhanced Floating Cannons, and himself to unleash a combined strike.
Together, the output was comparable to more than a dozen Saints attacking at once.
The ferocity of that combined strike made even the Shadow Sacred Domain shudder. Space tore open in strips, black cracks threading through the air in every direction.
Every strike fell on the crimson shell. Fissures spiderwebbed across its surface.
Just as the shell was about to shatter — a furious roar erupted. Blood-light flooded out from within, and a wave of terrifying power surged forth, fully twice what it had been before.
Lu Yuan's brow drew tight, shock flickering across his face as he stared at that blazing crimson radiance.
*It still had something like this hidden away.* The aura pressing down on him was far beyond anything he'd felt before — he could feel a genuine threat to his life.
In that instant, a streak of blood-light shot past.
Behind Lu Yuan, an overwhelming aura erupted into existence. His eyes snapped to a point — he swapped himself with a Shadow Clone in that same heartbeat, reappearing in the distance.
From afar, he glanced back at where he'd been standing. The clone he'd traded places with had already been shattered. And in his former position stood an enormous hound — its entire body blood-red, a pair of dark-red membranous wings spreading from its back.
His instincts recognized it immediately: this was the green dog.
But every wound on its body had completely healed, as though restored to its absolute peak.
The creature fixed its gaze on Lu Yuan. Those once cunning, coldly calculating green eyes had gone fully blood-red, churning with savage, unbridled ferocity.
It screamed.
In the next instant, the Shadow Clones surrounding Lu Yuan detonated one by one. His own body developed hairline cracks across the surface, and a piercing pain erupted through his skull.
The sonic scream was far more powerful than before.
Without hesitation, Lu Yuan immediately created a Shadow Clone at the farthest reachable point of the domain and swapped to it.
The moment the swap was done, he felt the clone he'd just vacated go silent — connection severed.
Already destroyed.
As Lu Yuan used Life's Gift alongside Wings of Light to restore himself, he continued spawning Shadow Clones throughout every corner of the Shadow Sacred Domain.
*This aberrated Feral Beast — it's like it evolved entirely.* Its strength was on a completely different level from before. He would need to fight it more indirectly.
"Slippery human!"
A shriek rang through Lu Yuan's mind, sending his skull buzzing.
He spotted the green dog materializing to his left, a claw sweeping toward him.
He narrowed his eyes, slipped sideways to dodge, and swept his heavy sword across the creature's flank in the same motion.
But the green dog was faster than he'd anticipated. It evaded almost instantly, and its tail — thick as a whip — lashed out at him.
He barely registered a flash of red before his body was sent tumbling backward, pain exploding across his chest.
He glanced at where the tail had struck — the armored chest piece.
Even his Sixth-tier Saint Grade Gene Armament had been visibly dented by that single tail lash. The force had punched straight through the armor and into his body, breaking through his defenses entirely.
But Life's Gift, Wings of Light, and even Stellar Body all carried regenerative properties — Life's Gift above all, which excelled at healing more than anything else.
The pain had barely registered before it was already fading.
The evolved green dog appeared at his side again, pressing the attack.
Lu Yuan's expression hardened. He flickered out of his own body, becoming a Shadow Clone, and slipped clear of the strike.
At the same time, he generated Shadow Clones at full capacity — leaving a hundred distributed across the far reaches of the Shadow Sacred Domain as escape anchors, while directing the remainder to surge toward the green dog.
The green dog had the edge on him right now. But that was no problem. *As long as I can keep healing and replenishing Spirit Power, I can outlast it.*
Even as that thought settled, he reached toward the green dog and clenched his fist. Hand of Death materialized once more.
The moment the phantom gray hand reached for the green dog, the creature vanished from the spot, sidestepping the attack.
*It couldn't dodge this before.* A chill ran through him. *Now it can?*
He surged Spirit Power through his body and locked his gaze on the green dog, the gray light in his eyes thickening.
Then — wisps of gray mist began curling up from the green dog's body as it tore through Shadow Clone after Shadow Clone, nearly half of them already in tatters around it. The creature stiffened, its power visibly diminished across every measure.
He had applied Hand of Death directly onto the green dog. The effect was still there.
The green dog — struck by Hand of Death — suddenly turned to look at him.
Then all the color drained from Lu Yuan's face. Four full pairs of his Wings of Light shattered outright; the remaining two pairs dimmed almost to nothing. He coughed up a mouthful of blood — and threaded through that blood were wisps of green mist, bleeding out of him.
He pushed past it and immediately re-summoned Wings of Light.
The moment they returned, searing pain shot through him — and then those green wisps began dispersing from his body, expelled as if being purified.
Even as this played out, he kept the Shadow Clones and Floating Cannons pressing the assault on the green dog.
At the same time, he tapped into his Spatial Type Transcendent Gene and compressed the space around the green dog.
Against a creature with spatial abilities of its own, he couldn't fully immobilize it — but he could disrupt its movements and bleed off its speed.
The concentration cost was significant. One-on-one, using spatial force this way might not be worth the trade-off. But this wasn't one-on-one. The Shadow Clones and Floating Cannons could handle the offense — the clones up front cost nothing to lose — while he himself only needed to burn Spirit Power.
Of course, if the green dog's sonic scream wiped out the Shadow Clones in a short window, he'd have no choice but to hold the line directly until a new wave re-formed. But his own strength, while a notch below the green dog's current form, could still absorb those exchanges long enough to rebuild.
Under spatial compression, the green dog's movements slowed.
Faced with the encircling Shadow Clones, it was forced to generate light shields to intercept attacks rather than relying on speed to evade as before. The rate at which it cleared Shadow Clones dropped as well, giving Lu Yuan more breathing room to spawn new ones.
For the moment, the green dog seemed mired — struggling to punch through the wave of Shadow Clones and reach him directly.
Those blood-red eyes blazed with mounting fury, and it let out another scream — savage sound waves pulsing outward in every direction, shattering a mass of Shadow Clones.
The scream knifed into Lu Yuan's mind as well, setting his brain alight, blood spraying from his lips.
It was, without question, the ability that gave him the most trouble. The hardest to guard against, the hardest to endure.
The moment the scream struck him, Lu Yuan instantly swapped to a Shadow Clone at the farthest intact point of the domain.
The moment the swap completed, the green dog was already where he'd been.
It smashed the clone it found there in a burst of rage — then let out another scream.
Lu Yuan had barely finished healing before the second scream drove through him again.
*Consecutive screams?*
He coughed blood in a steady stream. *It couldn't do this before. Is this what the power-up unlocked?*
He reappeared in a Shadow Clone at a scattered position elsewhere in the domain.
At the same time, he glanced at where the green dog now stood — right where he'd been moments before.
Gray mist spread outward from around it. The green dog's body lurched, fresh wounds appearing across its surface, blood seeping out.
The third scream it had been winding up was cut short.
Lu Yuan narrowed his eyes and directed the mass of Shadow Clones to swarm the creature again.
At the same time, he produced a Talisman — crystalline, like a shard of diamond — channeled Spirit Power into it, and watched it light up. A thread of soft light seeped into his mind.
He'd always known that his Mental Power, while immense in raw quantity, lacked dedicated defenses against Mental Power attacks. He had prepared for this.
This was a Talisman specifically designed to enhance Mental Power — one he had evolved all the way to Sovereign Grade.
After using the Talisman, he pulled out medicinal compounds and spirit fruits and consumed them all together.
Every piece was Sixth-tier Sovereign Grade, but there was plenty of it. Together, they boosted his Mental Power by a further several tens of percent — insurance against taking excessive damage or suffering a critical accident.
Meanwhile, the green dog conjured a crimson light shield to intercept the Shadow Clone assault, then opened its jaws in another scream.
This time, the Shadow Clones — sharing in Lu Yuan's enhanced Mental Power — held up far better. The ones at a greater distance grew faint and translucent, but they didn't shatter outright; barely two-thirds of them collapsed.
And Lu Yuan himself, though pain still lanced through his skull, took no further injury beyond it.
A faint smile touched the corners of his mouth.
He sent the surviving Shadow Clones charging in once more, continued generating new ones, and stayed alert to the possibility that the green dog might use spatial force to appear directly in front of him — keeping the space around his Shadow Clones frozen as a precaution.
He even began layering in gravitational suppression — push and pull, attraction and repulsion — to constantly disrupt the green dog's movements.
This drove his Spirit Power consumption up sharply. He was burning through a Seventh-tier Spirit Crystal roughly every minute just to keep his reserves topped off.
The green dog raged under the siege, launching curse attacks at Lu Yuan intermittently, attempting screams to break free — but it couldn't find a way out.
Its other attacks could destroy a fair number of Shadow Clones, but never all of them. Every strike was simply bleeding away its own strength.
As time passed — barely half an hour in — Lu Yuan felt himself growing more at ease. The green dog was weakening across the board.
The blood-red Scale Armor across its body was fading, the crimson bleeding back into green.
*That transformation was its trump card. And it had a time limit.*
As the green Scale Armor re-emerged, the green dog's aura began draining at an accelerating rate.
"Damn human!"
The green dog seemed to sense something was wrong. It screamed and roared, its body swathed in surging green mist, straining to punch through the ring of Shadow Clones.
But if it couldn't break free before, it had even less chance now.
Once the blood-light had fully faded and the green dog's aura fell even lower than it had been before the transformation, Lu Yuan found himself suppressing it effortlessly — with hundreds of Shadow Clones and six Floating Cannons.
The green dog gathered a dome of green light around itself, swatting a Shadow Clone to pieces — and in that same instant, a gray hand appeared above its head and reached down.
The green dog's aura lurched to a halt. Its Scale Armor dimmed further, its strength guttering out.
Sword light from the Shadow Clones crashed down onto its light shield and shattered it; the remaining blades fell directly on the green dog, drawing screams and shrieks from the beast.
Lu Yuan gave it no chance to recover. Attack after attack poured from the Shadow Clones' swords, joined by the Spirit Power beams of the Floating Cannons, burying the green dog beneath the storm.
When the green dog's aura finally went silent, Lu Yuan slowly brought it all to a stop.