Meteor Fall Master in the 'Starry Abyss'
Chapter 420 - 59. Why do some people only communicate well after being beaten?

Chapter 420: 59. Why do some people only communicate well after being beaten?

The blade emerged from the spacetime ripple!

Li Aozi’s blade struck first. Liue raised her hand to parry, but the electromagnetic energy seared her arm. The armor of the Dictator Form was completely defenseless against pure electromagnetic disintegration attacks.

Hiss!

The blade grazed her right wrist, and Li Aozi immediately swung the sword down fiercely. Liue tilted her head to avoid the horizontal sweep, and then she tore open space, teleporting behind Li Aozi. With her remaining left-hand blade, she stabbed toward Li Aozi’s back.

Whoosh——————!

The radiant Stardust Wings exploded, unleashing a raging, scorching vortex from the Pegasus Power, forcing Liue back. She raised her hand to shield her face.

This instinctive action completely disrupted her attack rhythm.

Li Aozi swiftly turned, the brilliant Stardust Wings like two laser blades, instantly evaporating numerous meteors and metal debris. He accelerated, pouncing forward with both hands wielding the sword, mustering all his strength, and slashing fiercely at Liue’s front.

Clang, clang——

Two consecutive heavy slashes were parried by Liue’s raised arms. Li Aozi attacked again, lifting his longsword high. Liue instinctively followed, raising her arm to block.

However, Li Aozi suddenly spun around, sweeping Liue away with the Stardust Pegasus Wings.

"A feint——"

Liue was astonished, but there was no time to react in the ensuing battle.

[Physical Strengthening]

Reinforced muscles, iron bones, and steel sinews.

After accumulating strength for so long, Li Aozi’s assault advanced relentlessly, the longsword dancing. Liue, with only one arm left, couldn’t fend off the onslaught.

Compared to a professional warrior, a scholar like Liue, no matter how terrifying her learning ability, couldn’t bridge the gap in such a short time.

The tide of battle turned.

Li Aozi stepped forward, the blade swirling up a storm. Under the relentless pressure, Liue was overwhelmed. She had to grit her teeth and dive into the complex field of space debris, leaving behind a series of discontinuous spacetime zones.

Liue knew she no longer had her initial battle strength and prepared to change the battlefield to leverage her short weapon’s advantage.

Her current state was poor. If she could force Li Aozi into an area where he couldn’t move quickly, she could regain the upper hand.

However, for Li Aozi, terrain was something he dictated.

"The outcome is decided."

Li Aozi’s body suddenly charged with energy, the ring of yellow light glowing. He plunged his left hand into the void, slowly tearing open a rift.

From his personal Element Pool, elements surged out in a frenzy.

Atmospheric, liquid, burning, earth, and dark elements.

[Elemental Communities]——structure generation!

In an instant, countless elemental units gathered in the field of space debris under Li Aozi’s mental guidance.

The dark elements guided terrifying dark energy, creating a powerful gravitational field to aid the high-speed rotation and convergence of earth elements, forming a floating asteroid. Liue, who was still changing her arm, was captured by the terrain before she could react.

Then atmospheric elements filled in, rapidly forming a cyclone under Li Aozi’s command, creating basic air pressure. Suddenly transitioning from vacuum to lower atmosphere, the drastic pressure difference not only interrupted Liue’s gear-changing motion but also forced her blood to stay in her lower body, nearly bursting her blood vessels.

If her brain wasn’t essentially dead, this alone could have drained all the blood from her brain.

The liquid elements infused into the asteroid turned the previously barren land into a lush forest. As Li Aozi stepped in, the liquid elements swarmed around, intimately adjusting his physiological state, eliminating the electrolyte imbalance caused by prolonged high-intensity fighting, and creating an advantageous elemental domain for him.

He raised his blade, and the burning elements gathered at his sword tip. Pointing his longsword forward, Li Aozi shouted:

"Arm yourselves! Everyone!"

Then thunderbolts descended from the sky. The raging atmosphere, entwined with lightning, condensed into towering storm cyclones, which grew limbs and glowing eyes, glaring at Liue. As the most violent elemental giants, the Storm Giants charged directly at Liue without a word, launching relentless assaults.

Snap!

Liue clenched her gravitational force, sweeping and toppling numerous giants. She raised an earth wall to block the metallic spears thrown by the rock giants. As the wall lowered, an icy storm approached gradually, with liquid giants continually eroding and freezing the air and liquid around her, slowing her down.

When she finally cleared the frost from her body and activated her biodynamic furnace to prevent her gear from freezing due to bodily fluid solidification, she looked up to see the burning giants merging with the giant spirits of the Earth, furiously launching numerous lava balls at her.

"You are actually an Architect!"

Liue tore apart several lava balls continuously. These tricks weren’t enough to embarrass her, but they still surprised her greatly:

"It’s not typical for someone to have the talent to become an Architect... Li Aozi, you might really be a remarkable person."

"Thank you for the compliment."

Li Aozi accepted the praise without hesitation. The Dark Elemental Giants descended behind him, their small dark red eyes staring at Liue.

[Gene Grafting · Dark Origin Energy Devour] This mutation direction gave Li Aozi the added ’Dark Oppression’ effect when releasing gravity, and by consuming dark elements, he could maintain a fixed strong gravitational field.

Since the battle began, he had never stopped exerting gravitational pressure. Until this moment, the effect of dark erosion finally reached 99%!

Imprisonment!

Liue’s body instantly stiffened, frozen in place.

"You can actually imprison a fellow gravity manipulator like me—"

"—I understand gravity better than you, sir."

He set up two strong gravitational fields, pulling from both sides of Liue. The replacement gear arm in her hand flew away, sucked into the gravitational field, and instantly torn into shreds. The gravity was so powerful that it distorted the surrounding light, causing matter to spin and be sucked in, frictioning at high speeds on the outer layer, radiating a bright orange glow.

"Is this your answer? Interesting! Li Aozi!"

Liue praised, then her temporarily generated Dictator eyes lit up with golden rings.

[Null Gravity]

Removed all gravitational fields, restoring the distorted spacetime to the original universe.

In a sense, she directly ’liberated’ herself from the distorted universe.

No gravitational field could restrain someone unaffected by spacetime; it released her on the spot. Liue didn’t replace her old arm, instead she raised her Light Blade.

"This has been an excellent battle. Even as a scientist who is not good at combat, I feel a surge of excitement. Your fight demonstrated your mastery of gravity and proved you could manage this mandate... You were right, my thoughts were wrong."

In the next moment, her body submerged entirely into the spacetime ripple:

"But—our battle isn’t over yet!"

Li Aozi raised his blade, his entire body swallowed by the spacetime ripple.

Then their bodies descended through the rift, colliding repeatedly in the cosmos.

One moment, they clashed blades in the upper atmosphere; she kicked Li Aozi’s neck.

The next moment, over the star harbor of the space station, Li Aozi grabbed her leg and flung her towards the sun.

They kept colliding, like two comets tearing through the sky, trailing crimson paths, plunging into the atmosphere.

Boom!

Liue slammed into the ground, raising a cloud of dust. Her body created a crater nearly a kilometer in diameter in the desolate plains, vaporizing the nearby soil into magma.

Li Aozi folded his wings, landing steadily with feet together. The Pegasus Wings behind him shattered and scattered, raining down illusory sparks.

He slowly approached Liue, looking at his dusty predecessor on the ground, and said calmly:

"Satisfied with the answer sheet?"

"...Phew."

Liue’s helmet slowly dissipated, reverting to her void spacetime ripple. She let out a long breath and said softly:

"Barely acceptable, just a bit better than my research assistants... The elemental architecture is too crude, the implant gear structure isn’t streamlined enough, and you didn’t even demonstrate gravitational propulsion and collapse. You should go back to university for further study."

"Indeed." Li Aozi responded indifferently: "Actually, I never attended a university; my education level is only high school."

Liue was stunned, her void head hit the ground.

"I never thought after studying my whole life and being a test taker all my life, I would be schooled by a high school grad."

Liue said self-deprecatingly:

"But speaking of which, you initially came to ask me something, right? What exactly did you want to ask?"

"It goes like this." Li Aozi squatted down and said calmly: "It’s not really a question, rather, I want to ask you a favor."

"A favor? Oh well, as long as it’s within my ability and doesn’t violate my principles, if there’s a chance, I’ll help."

Liue waved her hand. After being defeated, she was too lazy to say more.

"Actually, I already knew the pathway of the [Echoer]."

Li Aozi said:

"I wanted to tell you... Among the Sequential Arcane Energies, four major energies can be obtained through fixed channels, and one of them is Gravity."

"——So my initial theory doesn’t hold any water?"

"Not necessarily. It will take at least two hundred years for the general public to become aware of these things."

Li Aozi turned the conversation, raising his request:

"In the future, more and more people will master [Gravity] as a sequential arcane energy. I want to obtain the advanced method of the [Echoer] pathway from you, to help more [Mutants] so they can control their abilities, and simultaneously advance further, expanding our [Sovereign] pathway’s influence."

"Heh, I guess the latter is your real goal—expanding the pathway. You want to ascend to godhood, submerge in the Starry Abyss, break through the limits, and become the Chief God of the [Sovereign] faction."

Liue laughed, and while Li Aozi didn’t refute, she said:

"Li Aozi, your name might be overly common, but maybe, you truly have some features of the original ’Li Aozi’—not many, just one or two."

"So?"

"For old times’ sake of Li Aozi, I’ll agree to your request."

Liue raised her hand, taking out an information carrier from her spacetime fracture, and handed it to Li Aozi:

"Take it. It’s also a good thing. I hope you can help more people—just a hope."

Li Aozi checked it and, confirming it was correct, put it away with satisfaction, then added:

"You know, Mr. Liue, if I had spoken to you clearly from the start, there wouldn’t have been any need for a fight."

"That’s just how I am. When science meets displeasure, it says so directly. Who would act overly sentimental like a woman?... Or else, why do you think the president assigned me a guard?"

Liue sat up, disdainfully stating:

"And it’s quite something to think of, burning my wheat and corn fields to divert Zhuo’s attention—were you a bandit in your past life?"