Divine Emperor of Death

Chapter 5190: Barely Able To Hold A Candle?

The space around Davis and the Celestial Transcendent came to an abrupt stop as it became heavy.

The Realm Severing Sword didn’t glow or embody any elemental energy. It immaculately descended at a sluggish speed, yet it had never felt so fast in Davis’s eyes. Before he could think, his body was already trying to dodge as the chaos energy raced down towards him on the edge of the sword tip as it came down, peeling the reality apart.

But the world refused to let him move as though he were bound by chains.

Space had locked him in a rigid layer, chaotic pressure clamping down on him like a vise, the more he tried to move.

All he could do was raise his scythe.

Davis felt the terrifying realization that he was going to get cut down.

*Rrrip!~*

The rusted sword passed clean through the curved blade of the scythe manifestation, head and torso.

A white line stretched across his body, along with the spatial layer being cut off.

However, Davis didn’t scream or make any ripples as though he was a reflection on water.

He abruptly split into many Davises, each one scattering outward in every direction like a startled fish, each one equally corporeal and real.

The Celestial Transcendent’s sword arm froze mid-air, his eyes narrowing sharply.

The scattered Davises made such peculiar movements as though they were crawling across space, leaving him a bit creeped out. Then, all except one of them began to fade.

*Bang!~*

Then the unfaded one spun around while gathering yin force and tried to land a kick across the Celestial Transcendent’s face with the might of chaos infused with the powerful death energy from the replica, causing the Celestial Transcendent to raise the sword’s hilt and block it, but he was still sent staggering across the steps a few meters to the side.

Davis didn’t stop. His foot landed in the air as he closed in on the Celestial Transcendent like a specter, leaving afterimages behind. He swayed like a ghost, holding his scythe down like a death reaper.

Hateless Ghost Emperor Steps! Mid-Level Exalt Grade!

The Celestial Transcendent found it difficult to perceive Davis amidst the usage of his pure death energy.

*Slash!~*

Suddenly, the scythe’s curved blade came down in a diagonal arc, aiming for the Celestial Transcendent’s shoulder. The latter twisted his chaos sword up to intercept it, metal ringing against manifested death energy, sparks of gold-black and gray-white bursting where they met.

Davis didn’t stop there. He spun, robes snapping, the scythe whipping around in a low sweep meant to cut the Celestial Transcendent’s ankle, and when that too was parried, he reversed his grip and thrust the blade’s tip forward like a spear.

*Clang! Clang! Clang!*

Strike after strike, the Celestial Transcendent met them all with ease, but the more strikes he took, the less he could respond as Davis’s strikes increased in speed. Moreover, the scythe had no predictable rhythm to it, no pattern, the way a sword or spear technique might carry. It curved and hooked and reversed direction in ways that fought against every instinct his centuries of swordsmanship had built into him.

Suddenly, a thin line split across his forearm. Then another along his ribs, shallow but real, blood welling up before his own regenerative prowess sealed it shut.

His eyes flickered with interested.

This rascal was actually landing hits.

”Enough games,” The Celestial Transcendent muttered and surged forward again, chaos energy roaring around his blade as he closed the gap in a single stride, the world folding briefly around his passage. The Realm Severing Sword came down once more, carving an X through the space Davis occupied, meant to open him from both directions at once, an inescapable cross of annihilation.

Davis felt the lockdown clamp around him again, chaos pressure pinning space itself.

*Vwoom!~*

He didn’t try to escape it this time.

He quickly thought back to the excited feeling of using the Voidroach Blackcurse Movement Art and unleashed the first form.

Voidroach Darkshade Steps!

But instead of utilizing the Abyssal Voidroach Insect and Voidfang Blackcurse Eel’s bloodline, he used his own death energy and ghostly yang property as a substitute.

Black-white light rippled beneath his skin, his form splintering apart into scattering afterimages and materializing just as the twin blade-lines closed shut on empty air.

”Haha!”

Davis crawled away as he dodged the Celestial Transcendent’s overwhelming strike and turned around as he excitedly scoffed at the Celestial Transcendent.

The first usage of the Voidroach Darkshade Steps’s escape technique might’ve been a fluke, but the second surely wasn’t. He had researched it for a long time in bed while Jillian Hayden or Evelynn was beside him. Eventually, he didn’t get it, but with the white stone replica, he ingeniously incorporated the ghost’s elusory nature to accommodate the Abyssal Voidroach Insect’s elusory nature.

The Celestial Transcendent’s brows twitched to have his sword techniques that killed bigger foes having failed to cleave the Divine Emperor of Death apart twice.

He had to admit this brat’s ability to conceal and dodge was the best he had ever seen amongst young geniuses.

Still, he grinned, ”Don’t you feel ashamed crawling?”

Davis stood up straight while the other Davises disappeared. With his hands behind his back, he looked into the distance.

”A young genius indirectly taught me with his way of life that being shameless is the foremost trick to be able to survive in this ruthless world. I already understood this, but for the first time, I’m experiencing it through my own body. Hmm, it doesn’t feel good at all, but managing to dodge your sure-hit sword techniques without incurring a single injury gives me overwhelming joy to bury that sensation underneath.”

Davis returned his gaze, although he never took his senses off the Celestial Transcendent.

He brought one of his hands to the front and clenched his fist.

”In due time, I will be able to use this technique without crawling. At that time, it would be way more difficult to kill me.”

”What’s the technique called?” The Celestial Transcendent asked.

”Oh?” Davis’s brows raised, ”You also recognize the greatness of this technique?”

The Celestial Transcendent lowered his sword and chuckled, ”If it could escape the heaviness of chaos and the sharpness of the sword, it sure is a good technique.”

Davis paused. He saw the Celestial Transcendent circle around him.

He said, ”It’s called the Voidroach Blackcurse Movement Art. I found it here, but I modified it to suit my way of cultivation.”

”I see.” The Celestial Transcendent’s steps abruptly became heavy, each step putting extreme pressure on Davis as he made his way to him, ”It makes sense. Only in the hands of a genius like you can it show its true value. In the hands of others, it might as well be trash. But since you’ve just learned it, let me see how many times you can use it without making a mistake!”

*Bzzz!~*

Davis scattered into a swarm of himselves.

The Celestial Transcendent instantly tried to eliminate the ones nearby and succeeded, but failed to get the real him.

The Voidroach Blackcurse Movement Art read as such: The cultivator’s body becomes elusive, their footsteps vanish, soul fluctuations and aura disappear, every movement produces a faint black lightning ripple that erases the cultivator’s soul sense from tracking them as it paralyzes their soul sense karmically, and when endangered, allows them to split into hundreds of thousands of voidroaches. The moment the cultivator is struck, their body erupts into hundreds of accursed cockroaches crackling in black lightning, allowing them to make a counterattack or escape.

Davis couldn’t split himself into hundreds and thousands. He split into thirty versions of himself.

Nearly half died, and by the time he released the technique, he managed to escape and start a counterattack with his scythe manifestation, which exuded a deathly air and a sharpness well beyond that of real weapons due to the reaping nature of death.

He swung the long scythe numerous times.

Metal clanging sounds echoed repeatedly while he, time and time again, used the Voidroach Darkshade Steps’s escape technique, Hundred Voidroach Scatter. Each clone carried its true aura, radiating soul sense, and moved independently.

The Celestial Transcendent couldn’t eliminate all in the high-stakes battle as each ghost clone manifestation was as slippery as an eel, managing to move past the density of chaos and the sharpness of the sword.

Over a thousand exchanges and five times of using the Hundred Voidroach Scatter later, Davis finally reached another level within it.

Annihilative heavenly lightning and ghostly yang energy intertwined when the Celestial Transcendent eliminated one of his ghost clone manifestations amidst Davis’s usage of Hundred Voidroach Scatter. That ghost clone manifestation abruptly exploded into a web of lightning, causing the Celestial Transcendent to be enveloped in it and paralyzed- for a single moment.

His pupils dilated, not because he was paralyzed, but because he had realized something.

Lightning was the bane of ghosts, and annihilative heavenly lightning should be particularly effective against yin ghosts, but unexpectedly, it was able to combine with ghostly yang.

He finally understood the nature of this strange, deathly energy Davis was using and why the Stormheart Incarnation Prism wasn’t that effective on it.

But as his vision became more clear, he could only see a scythe swinging toward his neck while a cold glint radiated from the scythe holder who descended on him like a death reaper.

*Clang!*

The curved blade of the deathly scythe manifestation ripped through the Celestial Transcendent’s wrist and neck, but halfway through the neck, he managed to stop it through the force of the rusted sword used to block and the pure density of his chaotic body.

As though expecting that to happen, Davis flicked out the scythe from the neck, flipped it, and then hooked his rusted sword, dragging it away from his hand.

However, he didn’t let it go, causing Davis to imbue a purple-cold spiral of destruction into his grasp as he pointed his finger.

*Bang!*

The rusted sword flew out from the Celestial Transcendent’s grasp as his palm exploded.

The two of them were sent flying from each other, but when the Celestial Transcendent managed to stop himself as he held his head, his neck already having nearly healed till the edge, while the rusted sword was already within Davis’s grasp.

*Whoosh!~*

Davis didn’t even bother appraising it as it rumbled within his grasp. He quickly determined that there was no spirit inside, only a withered instinct, which meant that the spirit had long been dead. He threw it far away with immense force, and the illusory silhouette of Fairy Qiyra Darkstar appeared and caught the sword.

Her eyelids quivered, unable to believe how heavy it was.

With twilight, she concealed the armament and disappeared along with it, causing the Celestial Transcendent to narrow his eyes as he felt his connection to the sword disappear but remain.

However, he looked extremely confused.

These people wouldn’t bother to help Davis but steal his sword? The heck was going on!?