CHAPTER 659: 617 VS GREAT DEMON QILIN 3

The speed of the Great Demon Qilin is undoubtedly fast, but whether its consciousness can match the speed of its physical movements is hard to say. However, from my actual experience in combat, it managed its super speed well. There were several times when I tried to use my intuition to predict and avoid its attack paths, but all to no avail. I don’t know if its battle intuition surpasses mine or if it saw through my movements and adjusted accordingly, but I truly couldn’t avoid its strikes.

However, I didn’t devote all my energy to avoiding attacks. The same goes for defense. I can’t say I didn’t make an effort, just that I couldn’t exert 120% of my strength in this matter. Because I have a bad habit, when facing enemy attacks, I never consider evasion and defense as necessary options.

As a flame ability user, my strength ultimately lies in attack, as they say, "attack is the best defense," so instead of merely dodging and defending, I should think more about how to counterattack—this is undoubtedly one of the reasons, but perhaps more so because I have never encountered an attack capable of killing me in one strike since my debut.

This is actually quite rare within a demon hunter’s understanding. For the vast majority of demon hunters, and even many of Impermanence, attack power always exceeds defense. Once an attack hits the enemy or vice versa, even if it’s not a lethal blow, the balance of victory often tilts significantly, leading to a snowballing defeat. "First encounter kill" is common in the abnormal world; no matter how many times you’ve won in the past, a single failure can mean never recovering.

Although it’s not intentional, my battles often fall into a fixed yet clumsy pattern: First, taking most of the enemy’s attacks, sustaining and recovering from repeated wounds while analyzing the enemy’s weaknesses and flaws, and finally, inverting the situation with my powerful flame power.

This fighting style, although not exactly cheating, doesn’t align with my usual approach, revealing a hint of cunningness. I often feel it’s not very honorable. But since I genuinely have this advantage, I won’t hypocritically claim I don’t want to exploit it to the fullest.

This time, my fixed pattern made further advances—becoming even more cunning than before.

Why did the Great Demon Qilin suddenly get injured and slow down? It’s because of a very simple principle, the relativity of motion.

When it collided with me at a speed exceeding one-ninth the speed of light, it could also be viewed as me crashing into it at a speed exceeding one-ninth the speed of light. In other words, it had to endure impacts of the same magnitude as I did.

Under ordinary circumstances, such an impact wouldn’t significantly hinder it. When a martial artist punches an opponent’s face, no one would describe it as the opponent hitting the fist with their face, right? In a common demonstration of martial arts where a hand knife chops a brick, as long as you can properly break the brick, the force won’t fully rebound onto your hand.

The current confrontation is the same principle. As long as you attack the enemy’s weakest part with your strongest and ensure each strike can pierce and break the enemy, the one unable to withstand it first will definitely be the enemy.

But I am not an enemy who concerns myself with common sense. In my Third Crown Form, my very existence is an attack, a humanoid star, and now even being pierced and blown apart a few or a dozen times won’t easily faze me. And since my proactive attacks, no matter how many times I unleash them, cannot capture the nearly one-eighth light-speed Great Demon Qilin, and at the same time it voluntarily collides towards me, then the next step is easy.

That is, to concentrate all my spirit on increasing my body’s density, and to infuse within it a lethal, toxic intent.

The Great Unpredictable Qilin in life, like the Old Fist God, was a martial arts walker. I may not have comprehended martial arts at all, but at least I understood one thing: martial arts is the killing technique of forging one’s body into a powerful weapon. Even upon becoming Great Unpredictable, becoming a Great Demon, this nature seems unchanged.

Perhaps the Qilin also mastered some ranged attack techniques, like killing with fist wind or mana projection, but ultimately the strongest remains its rigorously honed body. In combat at the same level, there’s no logic in claiming victory without using one’s "main weapon", such a practice would waste its super speed.

Before becoming Great Unpredictable, perhaps the Qilin could use weapons like knives, spears, sticks, etc., but after becoming Great Unpredictable, it basically couldn’t find a weapon to match itself. Moreover, as a Great Demon now, even if it had a weapon worthy of itself in life, it doesn’t have one at hand now. For such a character, fighting in close quarters with fists and feet, I, the "unreachable enemy," is undoubtedly the worst possible opponent.

Whether I’ve adapted to its speed, or its speed is reduced to a level I can capture, I vaguely saw the afterimage of the Great Demon Qilin in motion. The husk, resembling black steel armor, bore multiple cracks of various sizes, and showed signs of reddening and melting.

Its trajectory at high speed also transformed from invisible to a trail of orange-red light, winding around me like a ball of thread.

If it retained sufficient rationality, it should adopt a different tactic or simply retreat, or prolong the interval between each attack, recovering and catching its breath while continuing to attack. Although it’s just personal speculation, I feel all the Great Demons should possess super-speed regeneration like Great Demon Xuanwu. In any case, it’s certainly stronger than continuing with its existing high-frequency attack rhythm.

Unfortunately, a crazed Great Demon lacks tactics; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been unable to glean even a bit of combat intelligence from the mind of the Catastrophe Demon. The attack timing and distance grasp by the Great Demon Qilin resemble more as instincts embedded in the unconscious domain rather than genuine thinking ability. Either attacking the enemy or being on the way to attack the enemy—those are its only two states.

Collision, collision, collision, we repeatedly crashed together. Now, the offensiveness of my body has risen beyond all my other techniques. It’s naturally so, because the flames in my Crown Form erupt from the Ash Weapon fused with my body. Just like a nuclear explosion’s epicenter has the strongest destructive power, I, this epicenter, also possess a similar nature.

In such a sense, the Great Demon Qilin and I are somewhat alike. Our bodies are the strongest form of attack, which is why I habitually rammed into enemies in the past.

The current contest is no longer about speed and strength, but endurance. My body may indeed be more "fragile" than the Great Demon Qilin’s, but repeated "revivals" have rendered this weakness irrelevant. I only need to destroy the Great Demon Qilin’s body and soul to claim victory, whereas the Great Demon Qilin still needs, on this basis, to let its power penetrate my soul and destroy the True Spirit. This bears no comparison at the same level and lacks fairness.

Before long, its body seemed finally unable to withstand the accumulated damage, shattering and breaking from the left shoulder to the chest. Its speed also became unsustainable, rapidly lowering to a level where I could catch with perception.

"——It’s over."

This time, it was my turn to take the initiative and charge swiftly towards it.

The Great Demon Qilin made no sound, yet I seemed to faintly hear it emit a silent angry roar. It increased its speed again, entering a realm my perception couldn’t capture. But even without deliberately perceiving, I could judge its trajectory at this moment—it’s sure to be a straight line.

It charged towards me with its knee, as if ignorant of what retreat means.

Upon collision, I was pierced again while its right leg exploded and shattered on the spot. As I recovered and turned to attack, it charged again without hesitation. After two more collisions, its left leg exploded, and its right half was shattered, with its speed dropping to roughly equal mine.

In the last round, I tightly clenched my right fist. The power of the divine seal fragment—the True Spirit Power flowed from consciousness, infusing into my fist. I launched a dash, delivering the final blow to its head.

Even without rationality, it was once a martial arts expert, theoretically making my pitiful level of attack unlikely to hit it. But having lost all limbs, if it wants to keep attacking, its only weapon is a headbutt.

Its headbutt collided with my fist.

In the next moment, my fist couldn’t withstand the impact and exploded on the spot, while its head also shattered and exploded simultaneously.

Great Demon Qilin, eliminated.

I exhaled. However, the battle hasn’t completely ended; it’s not yet time to be complacent. I recovered my soul, then turned around and swiftly moved towards the direction of Fa Zheng’s fight with the other two Great Demons.

Simultaneously, I briefly checked my current state. Having taken so many attacks head-on, although my soul can still recover to a complete state without affecting mana output efficiency, the True Spirit is nearly in a severe condition.

If the enemy hadn’t been the unyielding Great Demon Qilin but a fully rational and combat-intelligent Great Unpredictable Qilin, I truly don’t know what the outcome would have been.

When I approached Fa Zheng, his battle with the other two Great Demons was reaching its conclusion as well.