Chapter 51: I Am This Era!
"Hum! Swoosh!"
Zhang Ji channeled his inner strength, striking out with a claw that swept swiftly across the chest of one of the spirit puppets.
Yet his blue astral energy claws left merely a shallow mark upon its surface.
His leopard stance was barely at the initial mastery level; even when employing the Five Forms Fusion, its might remained somewhat lacking.
To sever this machinery as cleanly as cutting down a tree stump was no easy task.
"Swish, swish!"
Zhang Ji sidestepped, dodging a volley of bullets and a slashing blade, while his muscles suddenly bulged beneath his clothes.
Five Forms Fusion, Fierce Tiger Stance!
In an instant, he felt his physical strength increase by at least thirty percent.
"Boom!"
With a dragon-form punch thrust forward, the chest of the spirit puppet caved inward slightly under the impact.
On the other side, Zheng Chengze was also engaged in battle with a spirit puppet. His armor had taken two heavy blows, stripping away its outer shell and leaving two deep gashes on his body. Furthermore, the alloy staff in his hand had been snapped clean in two, prompting Zheng Chengze to discard the broken pieces immediately.
Facing such formidable foes, Zheng Chengze showed no intention of retreating or evading.
The tiger stance demanded ferocity; its presence had to be overwhelming.
To retreat was to lose!
His palms struck rapidly, unleashing a potent force against the joints of the spirit puppet. The astral energy disrupted the puppet's energy transmission, hindering its mechanical structure from exerting its full power.
The spirit puppet's body was driven steadily backward by Zheng Chengze's relentless onslaught, while the thermal rifle mounted on its shoulder locked its aiming reticle onto him.
Zheng Chengze's broad tiger-like palm thrust upward, forcibly knocking the gun barrel off course. A massive tree trunk caught in the crossfire was snapped cleanly in half, its cut edges charred pitch-black.
"Bang!"
Zheng Chengze delivered a punch straight to the puppet's chest core, and the surging astral energy finally brought it to a momentary halt.
"The heart!" Zheng Chengze shouted loudly.
Hearing the call, Zhang Ji shifted into the spirit crane stance. His agility multiplied instantly, allowing him to evade incoming attacks and close the distance to one of the spirit puppets in a flash.
Raising his palm, a massive amount of astral energy converged, emitting a pale blue glow.
"Boom!"
A fist-sized, dragon-shaped bolt of astral energy pierced straight through the spirit puppet's chest core, leaving a gaping hole from front to back.
Instantly, the spirit puppet ceased all movement.
...
Witnessing this scene, Sun Xinye's eyes widened in shock.
The core of the spirit puppet was located precisely there; all its bodily systems relied on the microchip housed within for operation.
Once damaged, the entire unit would suffer immediate systemic failure.
This was a weakness known to everyone on the inside.
Yet, could this truly be considered a weakness?
One had to bear in mind that this was the most heavily fortified part of the entire spirit puppet's body.
Under normal circumstances, it was sturdy enough to withstand direct cannon fire without being breached.
Yet at this very moment, the puppet's defenses had been breached with consummate ease.
A sudden realization dawned on him that the higher-ups were indeed far-sighted; twenty spirit puppets might not even be an overstatement—perhaps they were even a few too few, given that there appeared to be two grandmasters remaining upon the mountain.
...
"It works!"
Joy surged in Zhang Ji's heart. The agonizing sensation of failing to crack the enemy's defenses after battering them for so long had been excruciating.
Moreover, the dragon-form stance consumed a tremendous amount of astral energy, making him hesitant to deploy it casually.
Now that these things could be dismantled directly, the outcome was entirely different.
Five Forms Fusion, Spirit Crane!
Zhang Ji's form blurred, leaving almost visible afterimages in his wake. As he dodged incoming attacks, he lashed out with his claws at an unimaginable speed.
Blue radiance shimmered between his fingertips.
Five Forms Fusion, Frenzied Leopard!
"Swoosh! Clang, clang, clang!"
The spirit puppet was driven back.
The next moment, Zhang Ji had already charged his right palm, condensing a blinding blue brilliance.
"Boom!"
A dragon-shaped blast of astral energy erupted, tearing through the chest of the spirit puppet before him without the slightest obstruction, punching a fist-sized hole right through it.
Before it could twitch again, Zhang Ji delivered a follow-up punch, ripping out a mess of tangled wires and shattered circuit boards from within, causing the machine to fall completely and permanently still.
The remaining two spirit puppets posed no further threat to Zhang Ji.
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
Before long, two more dragon-form astral energy shockwaves shattered their defenses, sending them crashing down for good.
On the other side, Zheng Chengze was still locked in a bitter struggle with his assigned spirit puppet.
Having not mastered the Five Forms Fusion, his techniques, while powerful, clearly lacked the lethality required to pierce the puppet's armor.
With a burst of physical force, Zhang Ji crossed a distance of over a hundred meters in a single breath, bringing a blue-glowing palm down squarely upon the puppet's chest core.
"Boom!"
With that, all five spirit puppets in this sector were dealt with.
The total combat duration, from start to finish, was under four minutes.
Zhang Ji regulated his breathing slightly; effortless though he made it look, nearly sixty percent of the astral energy within his dantian had already been depleted.
The technique of Five Forms Fusion was formidable indeed, but its energy consumption was equally staggering.
"Five Forms Fusion?" Zheng Chengze asked.
"Yes." Zhang Ji nodded, speaking urgently, "Those things are coming. We need to move, now!"
High above, armed drones zipped through the air, while several other spirit puppets were being dispatched to provide reinforcements.
"Rat-tat-tat-tat!"
A massive torrent of bullets poured down instantly.
Zhang Ji and Zheng Chengze could only focus on running, weaving rapidly through the dense mountain forest.
Several homing grenades hurtled toward them at speeds exceeding a hundred meters per second. Zhang Ji raised a hand, releasing several wisps of astral energy that detonated the projectiles on the spot.
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
"Whiz!"
A sniper round whinged past, though both Zhang Ji and Zheng Chengze had anticipated and evaded it beforehand.
A hail of bullets and artillery failed to halt their advance.
This was the power of Grandmasters!
Had they been in some technologically underdeveloped small nation, the two of them could single-handedly have tipped the scales of a minor military campaign.
By this time, even more spirit puppets were in hot pursuit.
Some were even flying, the blue exhaust trails of their back-mounted thrusters flickering in the midair.
"They're catching up! Can you go any faster?" Zhang Ji asked Zheng Chengze.
As for Zhang Ji himself, he had yet to unleash even a fraction of his true speed.
The spirit crane stance, adopted after the Five Forms Fusion, granted a massive boost to both his speed and reaction time, elevating his capabilities by roughly forty percent beyond his baseline.
"I've reached my limit!" Zheng Chengze shouted through clenched teeth, channeling his astral energy to the utmost.
The performance limits of his powered armor capped out right here; maintaining this velocity across rugged terrain was already his absolute maximum.
The complex, mountainous terrain allowed him to maintain speeds exceeding a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, which was already utterly astonishing.
A conflicted look crossed Zhang Ji's face.
He was hesitating.
In the past, he would undoubtedly have abandoned Zheng Chengze and accelerated away on his own.
Yet, after experiencing the series of events at the Five Forms Sect, coupled with Li Long's benevolent attitude toward him,
he had inexplicably developed a sense of belonging to the Five Forms Sect!
"I'll hold them off for a while!" Zhang Ji said.
"Save yourself and go!" Zheng Chengze shouted.
Both men spoke almost simultaneously.
The next instant, the spirit puppets in the distance opened fire.
Anti-materiel weaponry flashed with gunfire, propelling bullets at multiple times the speed of sound straight toward Zhang Ji and Zheng Chengze.
Sensing the threat beforehand, the two men evaded in unison.
"Bang, bang, bang!"
Beside them, giant trees exploded upon impact, riddled with massive craters.
"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"
Spirit puppets materialized out of the surroundings, their numbers swelling to over ten units.
Swarms of armed drones buzzed menacingly overhead.
"Thud!"
"Pfft!"
A bullet successfully anticipated Zheng Chengze's evasion path, striking him and sending him tumbling violently to the ground.
Zhang Ji, employing the spirit crane stance, managed to dodge the barrage.
He intended to circle back and pull Zheng Chengze to his feet, but at that exact moment, Zheng Chengze slammed a hand against the earth, vaulted back to his feet with desperate urgency, and chose instead to charge headlong back toward the advancing spirit puppets.
"Go!" Zheng Chengze roared, channeling his remaining astral energy as he yelled at Zhang Ji.
Assessing the remaining astral energy in his body—which was now less than forty percent—Zhang Ji made a resolute decision, dashing forward and grabbing a firm hold of Zheng Chengze.
"I'll carry you!"
Unleashing the spirit crane stance to its absolute limit, the internal circulation of energy flowed smoothly through his meridians. Zhang Ji grew increasingly fluid in his movements, easily sensing every subtle detail of his footing as he pushed off the ground.
Light and nimble, even while dragging Zheng Chengze along, he maintained a tremendous pace.
Realizing the situation, Zheng Chengze stopped shouting, exerting every ounce of his remaining strength to run alongside Zhang Ji.
"Thud!"
"Thud!"
"Thud!"
Zhang Ji lightly grazed the trunks of towering trees with his feet to alter their momentum and dodge incoming attacks, all the while shifting Zheng Chengze smoothly out of the line of fire.
His feet barely kissed the earth before springing away once more, mirroring the graceful and darting flight of a divine crane—elegant, light-footed, and remarkably agile.
Before long, the sound of rushing water reached his ears.
It was the great river snaking past the foot of the Five Forms Mountain.
Known as the Five-Flavors River, its waters were turbulent and wide, stretching for hundreds of kilometers and connecting directly to the primeval wilderness of the Wei Mountains.
Once they reached the river and used its current to retreat deeper into the mountains, even in this modern era, finding them without expending massive resources would be an impossible feat.
"We're almost there, just a little further!" Zhang Ji called out.
As he spoke, he glanced sideways at his companion.
Only to find that Zheng Chengze's breathing had ceased at some unknown moment.
Zhang Ji's expression froze in place.
...
"Captain, the targets are currently by the bank of the Five-Flavors River. One casualty confirmed; the survivor is Zhang Ji, the direct disciple of the Five Forms Sect."
"Surround him. Demand his surrender!"
...
Spirit puppets swarmed in from all directions, encircling Zhang Ji as drones circled menacingly above.
Zhang Ji dropped to one knee, flipped open the helmet visor of Zheng Chengze's armor, and gently closed his eyes.
Then, he pushed Zheng Chengze's body gently into the rushing waters of the Five-Flavors River.
Legend had it that the founding patriarch of the Five Forms Sect had attained transcendence in this very river, which was how the waterway had earned the name Five-Flavors River.
"Zhang Ji, surrender! You cannot hope to stand against us!"
The amplified voice boomed from a drone, ringing clearly in Zhang Ji's ears.
Zhang Ji raised his gaze toward the hovering drone, then swept his eyes across the ring of spirit puppets closing in on him.
A faint smile touched his lips.
The era, was it?
Against the collective might of an era, how terribly insignificant an individual appeared!
Even a colossal sect like the Five Forms Sect had no choice but to choose retreat.
Those who chose to resist head-on, like the Vajra Sect, had simply been pulverized and erased by the wheels of history.
"However... I am this era!!!" Zhang Ji murmured softly.
The Vajra Sect was not; the men hiding behind the screens of the drones were not; neither was Li Long and his people... Only he was, and only he could be... No, at this very moment, he had to be—he had to be that carp capable of transforming into a dragon!
"Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble!"
Zhang Ji closed his eyes slightly, his mental state shifting as he felt the surging moisture in the air vibrating in resonance.
At some unperceived moment, the final fragment of [Waterfall Descent] had condensed, synthesized through the boundary space into a combat crystallization of (Rare) grade designated as [Waterfall Descent].
"Roar!"
"Boom, boom, boom, boom!"
Every last drop of remaining astral energy within Zhang Ji's body erupted simultaneously. A dragon-shaped surge of astral energy burst forth amidst a torrent of water resembling a cascading waterfall, combining with the river current into an attack of matchless, overwhelming majesty.
When the dust finally settled, the arena was littered with the shattered wreckage of all the spirit puppets, and even a majority of the drones in the sky had been blasted out of the air.
As for the spot where Zhang Ji had stood moments before, it was now completely empty.