The supreme power called up by the Immeasurable Sword pressed down like a dark cloud, filling everyone with despair.
In the face of all this, Tang Jie looked up and smiled.
He casually said, "You're sure that you have the Immeasurable Sword's hilt?"
He raised his hand, revealing that he was holding another sheath.
As this sheath appeared, the sword lights were once more suppressed.
But the suppression from before had been the effect of the Blood River Lord's illusion. This time, it was actually happening.
"How!?" the Blood River Lord roared.
The previous shock had been faked, but this shock was very real.
As the sword sheath flew out, Tang Jie also produced the hilt. He pointed it at the Immeasurable Sword, and the scene from before replayed as if time had jumped backward.
The Immeasurable Sword fell from the sky, and in the process, the previous sheath and hilt fell away from it like liquid gold. It turned out that these had both been manifestations of the Sovereign Blade.
To prevent the Blood River Lord from noticing anything fishy, Tang Jie hadn't used the Duplication spell, instead turning the Sovereign Blade into the shape of the hilt and sheath. Of course, if the Blood River Lord hadn't been trying to fool him and had used the real Immeasurable Sword, then Tang Jie would have died the moment he took out the fake sheath. But the Blood River Lord had used an illusion, so when Tang Jie had taken out the fake sheath, the Blood River Lord kept up the illusion and made the sword light fade. In this way, the two tricksters ended up acting things out perfectly.
Thus, Tang Jie had actually been gambling with his life. If he had lost the bet and the Blood River Lord had used the real Immeasurable Sword, all the sword light would have been real, and Tang Jie would have died.
But this was reality!
Reality would never give you complete information. Most of the time, everyone made their decisions based on limited information.
The information provided by Na Shan and Shui Yao wasn't enough to get him the correct answer, and his deductions had only let him find a few clues. In this information-poor environment, it took immense courage to make this sort of choice.
Fortunately, Tang Jie had won.
At that moment, the Immeasurable Sword fell from the sky toward the hilt in Tang Jie's hand.
Upon seeing that the Immeasurable Sword was about to fall into Tang Jie's hand, the Blood River Lord roared with a fierce light in his eyes, "You won't succeed!"
The Blood River Behemoth abandoned its battle with Tang Jie's original body and charged over to grab the Immeasurable Sword.
The original body was caught off guard by this sudden development and couldn't stop it, but as the behemoth's claw reached toward the sword, Tang Jie waved a hand, and a power shot out and pushed the Immeasurable Sword to the side, away from the claw.
But at this moment, the six Blood River avatars roared, and a giant hand emerged from the Blood Sea and seized the Immeasurable Sword.
This battle of deception and trickery instantly intensified to the maximum as almost everyone attacked that blood hand.
Numerous spell arts filled the air, the blood hand and the behemoth blotted out the sky, and the Immeasurable Sword still flashed with sword light, the various powers all clashing against each other.
There was a series of explosions, and then countless cries as everyone was blasted away by the ensuing shockwaves, even Tang Jie and the Blood River Lord.
At this moment, the original body caught up to the behemoth, swinging the axe made of Mother Cloud Essence Metal at the arm holding the Immeasurable Sword. The behemoth howled in pain and let go of the sword, but a sudden blast blew away the Immeasurable Sword, causing it to miss the hilt.
The original body yelled and made a flying leap, reaching out toward the Immeasurable Sword.
Just when he was about to grab it, the giant hand the Blood River Lord had summoned once more bounced the sword away.
The original body once more lunged toward the sword, but the behemoth grabbed him and threw him to the ground, knocking down numerous buildings in the process. As the original body sought to get back up, the behemoth jumped at the Immeasurable Sword.
But just when it was about to grab it, the Immeasurable Sword changed directions, flying toward Tang Jie's avatar. It was once more being drawn toward the hilt.
Furious, the behemoth was about to make another grab when the original body leapt over and brought the behemoth down, the two of them rolling across the ground.
This time, there was nothing left to stop Tang Jie from taking the Immeasurable Sword.
"The sword is mine!" the Blood River Lord shouted, a savage gleam in his eyes. "If I can't have it, no one can!"
The giant blood hand came down, but this time, rather than seizing, it thrust out a finger imbued with immense power.
The finger struck the Immeasurable Sword like a falling mountain.
There was no furious storm or mighty shockwave, and time seemed to freeze.
With a light crack, a fracture appeared on the blade of the Immeasurable Sword.
The fracture widened and spread, and in a flash, it had covered the entire blade.
Tang Jie paled. "No!"
The Immeasurable Sword blew apart into fragments that rained down from the sky.
Just like that, the Immeasurable Sword had shattered.
With a bright cry, the refined spirit came out. It had already been refined, so even though it was free from its cage, it didn't run and just floated in the air.
"Tang Jie, you've ruined my ten-thousand-year plan!" the Blood River Lord bellowed as he stared at the fragments of the Immeasurable Sword. Even though it was his finger that had shattered the sword, he put all the hatred from the thwarting of his plan onto Tang Jie.
In the past, he had chased Tang Jie as an excuse, but now, he was determined to chase Tang Jie down until one of them was dead.
Tang Jie casually asked, "You think things are over?"
As he spoke, there was a golden flash.
Countless drops of golden liquid congealed in the air, turning into the form of the Immeasurable Sword, at which Tang Jie threw the hilt and sheath.
The hilt flew up and stuck itself to the Sovereign-Blade-turned-Immeasurable-Sword.
The sword spirit let out a cry and began to fly toward the new Immeasurable Sword.
The Blood River Lord was startled, and then he shouted in realization, "Oh no!"
But this time, he was too late to stop anything.
The sword spirit flew into the sword, treating the Sovereign Blade as its new home.
When the Sovereign Blade merged with the hilt, some of the Immeasurable Sword's energy rubbed off on it, and when the sword spirit was refined, it came to instinctively consider a sword its home. Once it was stripped of a sword to call home, it instinctively looked for a new sword.
As Tang Jie had given it this opportunity, it naturally seized it and hastily entered its new home.
Compared to when the Blood River Lord had been constantly refining it, it now had much more freedom.
The Blood River Lord had never imagined this development. He roared, "This isn't the Immeasurable Sword, so it can't become the key. Don't even think about using it to control the Treasure Paradise!"
As if he had spoken a prophecy, Tang Jie instantly sensed that even though had taken the sword spirit, there existed a gap between the Sovereign Blade and the Treasure Paradise that made communication impossible.
Using this to control the Treasure Paradise was basically impossible.
But Tang Jie simply smiled. "If I can't control it… then I won't. I can just take it with me instead."
He threw out the Mountain River State Diagram.
The Mountain River State Diagram flew high into the sky and began to shine a brilliant light over the Treasure Paradise, drawing it into the diagram.
The Blood River Lord and everyone else were dumbfounded by the sight.
Nobody had expected Tang Jie's independent world to have the ability to take in more land. A moment later, countless mountains and rivers began to disappear into the Mountain River State Diagram.
The sky collapsed, the earth was flipped upside down, and the world began to perish!
The Blood River Lord let out a cry of unprecedented anger and indignation, blood and flames filling the sky.
"This… This is what I saw," Shui Yao shouted.
Liu Qianyi was right. What Shui Yao and Na Shan had seen hadn't been two different potential outcomes, but two different points in time in the future.
The world of the Treasure Paradise collapsed and crumbled as Tang Jie callously took all there was in it for himself.
He wouldn't have been able to do this before, as attempting to take the Treasure Paradise would draw the frenzied assault of the sword spirit.
But now that he had the sword spirit, even if he couldn't control the Treasure Paradise, he was free from the sword spirit's attacks, allowing him to do whatever he wanted.
Bringing these two worlds together so as to expand and strengthen his own world!
This was what Tang Jie wanted to do.
Whether or not he could control the Treasure Paradise with the Sovereign Blade wasn't his concern at all.
Once he devoured the Treasure Paradise, everything would naturally be under his control!
"Nooo!" The Blood River Lord was still howling in fury and shock.
The Mountain River State Diagram was still expanding and devouring without mercy.
The two worlds were coming together, and the doomsday of the Treasure Paradise had come.
Even though the collapse of the world appeared rather shocking, the Treasure Paradise was so vast that the merger took a rather long time, which meant that this apocalyptic sight would go on for some time.
Everyone trembled in fear in the face of this world-ending calamity, but Tang Jie was flying high and smiling amid the destruction.
He looked at the Blood River Lord as one would look at some pathetic insect, his eyes full of pity.
"You think you've won?" the Blood River Lord roared, like a warrior bellowing in frustration at the heavens.
"I know that you have one last move, so why don't I just tell you what my guess is?" Tang Jie smiled. He casually went on, "Ordinary methods are no longer enough to deal with me, so you naturally need something heaven-shaking, and it has to be something rather costly, or else you wouldn't have kept it until the end. Considering that you're the Blood River, with countless avatars, you must be capable of coming apart and coming together. I'm guessing that you should be able to merge all your avatars together."
The Blood River Lord was startled.
"Of course, bringing them together still isn't enough. In reality, it won't result in much of an increase in power. But if you add that guy, everything changes." Tang Jie pointed at the Blood River Behemoth.
He looked at the Blood River Lord and asked, "Is my guess right?"
After a momentary pause, the Blood River Lord started to laugh. "Good, very good! You really are a clever one! Yes, this is my last trump card, merging with the behemoth! Alas, once I do this, all of the essence blood in this avatar will disappear into the behemoth. The behemoth is mindless, but once it obtains my essence blood, its mind will be opened, which will make controlling it more difficult. It might even steal my treasures and run away. This is why I am unwilling to resort to this method. But at this point, I can't worry about such things anymore. So long as I can kill you and take this Mountain River State Diagram, even if it ends up in the behemoth's hands, it would still be better than letting you go free!"
As he spoke, his remaining avatars flew toward the Blood River Behemoth.
He very straightforwardly used all of them, not even attempting to leave behind a single avatar. He understood that this battle could no longer be won by a single Heart Demon or Soul Transformation avatar.
Even if he left behind an avatar, he wouldn't gain any sort of advantage.
Only by fighting with all he had did he have any hope of salvaging this battle.
The avatars dissolved into crimson light and flew into the behemoth.
The behemoth threw its head back and roared, its thunderous tones forming human words.
"Tang Jie, let's see what you're still capable of!"
A giant palm swatted down!
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