Lightning and blood, honor and hatred.
The battlefield had transcended mortal struggle. It had become a legend in motion.
The final moments of the battle began with the crack of the void itself—a soundless rupture that made every Grandmaster in the audience narrow their eyes.
Su Mengtian, encased in a celestial tempest, stood across from Feng Yanzhao, whose own bloodline had begun to twist reality with its overwhelming might.
Feng Yanzhao's cloak burned away, revealing the full manifestation of his dual bloodlines—Infernal Flame Phoenix and Celestial Blade Monarch. His hair, now cascading flames and silver mist, flowed unnaturally against the wind.
"Time burns for me," Feng Yanzhao whispered.
He raised both hands, and a duality of laws surged into form. From the left—Chrono Ruin Pulse, a technique that disrupted time in localized pockets, making defense nearly impossible. From the right—Voidflame Cataclysm, a sweeping cascade of black fire infused with spatial compression.
Su Mengtian's breath was steady.
The Guardian Spirit behind him echoed his movement, a towering form cloaked in divine lightning. The spectral figure unsheathed its own halberd—identical to Su Mengtian's Thunder Halberd.
Together, they activated a synchronic technique: Draconic Pulse Resonance.
The battlefield screamed as dual thunderbolts spiraled in a rhythmic pattern, crackling like sentient chains around Feng Yanzhao. But the Temporal Reaver bloodline bent the chain loops, flickering out of sync with time's normal flow.
Each moment seemed distorted.
Attacks landed—then reversed.
Wounds appeared—then vanished.
"This is what it means to manipulate causality," Feng Yanzhao murmured.
He surged forward.
At the very edge of his reach, Feng triggered a forbidden fusion: Void-Torn Hourglass.
The entire coliseum blinked.
Inside that blink, an alternate battlefield formed—a broken dimension locked in collapsing timelines and freezing flames.
Su Mengtian staggered for the first time. Blood lined the corner of his lips.
The Guardian Spirit turned its gaze to him.
Su Mengtian nodded. "Time to ascend."
He released the sixth seal on his bloodline.
The Thunder Guardian Dragon erupted from within. Ethereal wings unfurled across the warped dimension. His lightning now shimmered with astral hues—Void Thunder, born from compressing divinity within his chi.
A new stance.
Storm Emperor's Descent – Second Movement: Celestial Vein Shatter.
His halberd split the sky of that twisted realm.
Thunder pulsed backward through time, unweaving the distortions of Feng's hourglass field. The Guardian Spirit synchronized, echoing the technique at the spirit plane. Both strikes hit reality and its metaphysical twin at once.
The Voidflame shattered.
The temporal mist wavered.
Feng Yanzhao grunted, shielding his chest with Monarch Scale Phase Shift, but the impact tore through his ribs and broke the time cycle he had formed.
"Impossible… You struck in time and against time…"
Su Mengtian's aura surged again. His eyes glowed with silver lightning, symbols of stardust crowning his brow.
"This is the will of my Guardian Spirit. This is the path I carve through fate."
But Feng wasn't done.
From the blood dripping down his palm, he carved the sigil of his clan—the Sevenfold Monarch Seal.
A pillar of gold and void arose.
At its peak hovered Samsara Sovereign Form, his clan's final inheritance—a mode that let him reincarnate once within a battle, returning with temporary godlike force.
His voice thundered, "You end one me, and face another."
The coliseum went silent.
Even the Heaven-Sovereign realm elders watching from divine projections narrowed their eyes.
But Su Mengtian stood his ground. He wasn't done either.
He placed his halberd into the ground. Lightning spread in a ritualistic circle.
"Guardian Spirit—Phase Shift Battleform."
The Guardian Spirit entered him.
For a moment, Su Mengtian's body floated—no longer entirely mortal.
Storms gathered above.
He now wielded: Heavenpiercer Halberd Mode: Ascendant Dragon Rampart.
Feng Yanzhao charged, invoking fire, time, and death.
Su Mengtian met him with lightning, fate, and unity.
The sky was no longer just a backdrop to war—it had become its battlefield.
As the roar of Heaven's Maelstrom faded into thunderous echoes, Feng Yanzhao's silhouette re-emerged from the cascading lightning storm, his robes scorched, his eyes burning with relentless fury.
He hovered in the air with both palms raised, forming a diamond-shaped sigil that pulsed crimson—an ancient forbidden glyph, one passed down from the hidden sects of the Nether Realm.
Su Mengtian, still suspended amidst the cyclone of his own unleashed storm, narrowed his gaze. The heavens above him dimmed as the thunderclouds began to spiral with unnatural speed, reacting instinctively to the god-tier pressure his opponent now exuded.
Feng Yanzhao snarled, "You wanted a fight that echoes across the ages? Then witness my Ascendant Sin Art: Crimson Collapse!"
The sigil in his hands shattered with a shockwave that sundered clouds. Beams of chaotic energy spiraled downward, distorting time and space.
It was no longer just an attack—it was a cosmic rejection of reality's rules.
Su Mengtian gritted his teeth and spun his thunder halberd in a figure-eight motion. The ancient weapon pulsed with sentient fury, resonating with the Guardian Spirit now fully merged beside him—an armored titan of lightning and will, wielding a spear of pure condensed aether.
Together, they raised their weapons skyward.
"Thunder Guardian Art: Wrath of Ten Thousand Stars!"
A dome of golden lightning expanded from Mengtian's body, forming a celestial constellation that mirrored the vault of the heavens. Each star pulsed with divine energy and then rained down bolts of destruction to intercept the incoming collapse.
Boom.
Boom.
BOOM.
The coliseum walls cracked further. Dimensional rifts tore open momentarily as each blow became a contest between destruction and defiance.
Feng Yanzhao vanished mid-air—and reappeared behind Su Mengtian with a single whisper of the Void Step: Crimson Rift Displacement.
His hands blurred, forming over twenty hand seals in under a breath.
"Izan Chaos Descent!"
A blood-red spear formed mid-air—shaped like a spiral galaxy condensed into a needlepoint.
He threw it.
Su Mengtian, guided by the spirit fused beside him, raised his left arm and summoned his third resonance—Draconic Aegis Halo, an inherited technique embedded in his first hidden bloodline. A coiling dragon of electric jade wrapped around him, forming layers of translucent shields.
The moment the chaos spear struck, it exploded into an implosion of space and blood essence.
The first three shields shattered.
The fourth cracked.
But the fifth—the Guardian Spirit's own shield—held.
Su Mengtian's breath quickened.
"Your talent is monstrous," he admitted, "but you're not the only one who's suffered and bled for every inch of power."
He thrust forward.
"Thunder Halberd Technique: Ninefold Tempest Spiral!"
His halberd roared, splitting into nine afterimages that each carried the force of a mountain. They struck in spiraling harmony, forcing Feng Yanzhao to retreat with flashes of spatial bends.
But the final blow pierced his shoulder.
Blood spurted mid-air.
Feng Yanzhao gasped. "How… can your spirit move with you so perfectly?!"
Su Mengtian's eyes glowed faintly blue, an ancient rune spinning in each iris.
"My Guardian Spirit is not bound to the material realm. It was born of my soul… and now we move as one."
The crowd, stunned silent until now, erupted into cheers and disbelief. The very idea of a fully synchronized Guardian Spirit, capable of reactive offense and defense, was heresy to traditional doctrine.
Su Mengtian lowered the halberd. He wasn't finished yet.
"Astral Lightning Commandment: Sky Emperor's Fall."
A massive formation appeared beneath him, glowing like the celestial sea. From the sky, a spear forged of constellation fragments—millennia-old remnants of a time when gods still walked—descended with solemn finality.
Feng Yanzhao's eyes widened.
He summoned his own hidden trump card.
"Forbidden Body Seal: Demon's Blood Reckoning!"
A dark aura exploded from him.
His body enlarged.
Veins turned black.
His heart beat with demonic rhythms.
He caught the descending sky-spear with both hands—barely—but he caught it.
Crack.
His bones groaned. Lightning surged through his body like boiling oil.
But he remained standing.
The ninth phase had ended.
Both combatants panted heavily, one bleeding, the other radiating lightning. The arena below was rubble. The heavens above were fractured.
And yet…
Neither had fallen.