"Damn it, damn it all. I was this close to raising it up to gemstone."
A young woman tousled her yellow hair in frustration.
"Oh well, at least I'm finally out."
All her frustration seemed to vanish instantly as she looked around and began skipping.
Suddenly her face changed and she looked in a certain direction.
"That's right, I still need to kill that bastard before he takes out the rest of the guardians I left at the Crystalliser Valley."
A playful smile broke out on her face.
"Those golems aren't easy to handle, they're even harder to make. It's gotta be the anomaly this time right?"
A figure rose from the ground next to her. It was exactly identical to Executioner Yellow, but was made of stone.
"Yes, it has to be. Guess we'll finally see if it's a boy or a girl."
Yet another figure rose from the other side and said, "Blue, Green and White are all dead. Let's go full force from the beginning so we don't add one more name to the list."
The original Executioner spoke again.
"It's not so easy to lose. Me and Red, we are the weakest but have the fastest progression speed. This person must be a monster to progress almost as quickly as us, but that's in the past."
"Yes, here there aren't many shortcuts to quickly rank up their geno core. It must be bronze or silver at best."
The second clone ultimately agreed with the first and original.
RUMBLE!
The ground suddenly began to boil and different terrifying figures rose one after the other. Under the feet of the three clones, three separate wyrms came out, hosting the girls on the crowns of their heads.
All manner of creeping creatures, swimming beasts and flying monsters emerged from the ground, within a hundred kilometer radius.
ROAR!
The army of stone beasts advanced at a rapid pace, being pushed forward by the ground itself at a speed that put most sacred-blood creatures to shame.
The scene reflected clearly in a pair of slit golden eyes.
"What will you do now, Bian? Executioners can't use beast souls in the fourth sanctuary, but the power we gain in exchange is more potent than any beast soul."
Ouyang Ming considered the advancing dust cloud for a moment before he turned around and walked away.
***
'Persist or Retreat?'
There was always a time to know when to quit. Bian was seriously considering this as one of those times.
But there was a major issue. Bian was no fool; he clearly knew these Stone Knights were not normal.
If he could not handle them now, they would surely cause his downfall eventually.
'Persist I guess.'
It wasn't the first time Bian had his life on the line and it wouldn't be the last.
Wasn't it just to scour the entire statue for a special speck of dust?
No big deal.
Ceasing all his unnecessary thoughts, Bian focused entirely using the Emperical Aura.
This amazing power of his had a very strong boon which could also be considered a big flaw.
To prevent him from having a seizure every time he activated it, the Emperical Aura generally avoided the specifics and details over the large area.
It was to protect him and most importantly, to keep his focus single while he was fighting. However, Bian now needed to remove those safety restraints.
The fluid all around him became more and more lucid. It began to take on more of a solid state.
Bian began a methodological search of each particle, searching for anything different.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead at the one-minute mark.
'No, this won't work. I've been recounting thousands of dust particles I had counted before.'
As the fluid of dust did not just stay still, Bian would also have to keep track of the position of every single speck he had counted.
His thoughts became more lucid and the specks around him flowed at a lower speed.
Deep within Bian, in an area he could no longer access, three infinitely long pillars stretched through the space.
One of the pillars looked to be made entirely of jade. It looked the sturdiest and the most durable.
The second pillar was coated in an ineffable haze. It was the only pillar that could activate itself when necessary.
The third and last pillar had streaks of different coloured lightning flowing round about it.
Red, Orange, Blue, Green, Yellow, Violet, White and so many other colours.
Right now, this pillar became more and more active, the piston within it pumping faster and faster and more streaks of lightning flowed about it furiously.
Back in reality, as the Soul Pillar sped up, time slowed down more and more. The image of the lightning rune did not surface in his mind, yet time diluted like never before.
Outside the statue, time seemed to have come to a standstill. The approaching Stone Knights, the aggressive Scorpion Golems that split up to face them, all of them came to nearly a stop.
With time slowed and Bian's perception moving even faster, he covered large parts of the Knight's internal space without confusing any new particles for ones he had counted before.
Dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust.
Bian saw it all, every single speck flashing by like a documentary playing at ten-times speed.
Frame by frame, speck by speck, Bian scoured through it all.
Until...
"Bingo!"
Blood flowed down his nose and around his maniacal smile, but Bian couldn't care less.
He found it, a speck with terrifying lifeforce hidden so well among its many, many, counterparts.
A translucent ring appeared within Bian's vision. The ring rapidly shrunk until it perfectly locked onto that particular speck of dust.
Then Bian released his focus and time sped up as normal, but his target was not lost.
He brought out the Edge of Ruin and with a timely aim, unleashed a God Killing Slash, sundering the sea of dust.
On the outside, the Knight had mostly recovered as Bian's Scorpion Golems had more opponents to face.
Suddenly, a red sword light burst out from its back alongside a powerful indigo aura that soon shrouded the entire valley.
Bian jumped out from the back with his right arm in a pinching gesture.
Turns out this one speck was so powerful, it was mainly unharmed by the powerful God Killing Slash.
Bian observed its sequence structure using the Dongxuan Sutra and found a flaw created by the God Killing Slash.
He pinched the speck of dust, destroying its sequence structure and wiping it out of existence.
With a loud groan, the Stone Knight he had just jumped from began crumbling apart. It had not even had a chance to recover before it was fully destroyed.
As usual, there was no announcement. Only the counter of the Solum Mirror provided him with solace for all his hard work.
[Gold Solum Mirror]
[Retaliation: 700/700]
[Soul Capacity: 15/700]
"Why is it so small though? All that just for fifteen points."
Bian let out a heavy sigh as he cleaned the blood from his face. He didn't even know he was capable of reaching such a high state of focus.
He took a look around the battlefield. One of the Numbered Series had almost been destroyed, but he had already taken out a single Stone Knight.
The last two pairs were yet to arrive, so the Numbered Series were more or less handling the five Stone Knights well.
He knew how to handle the Stone Knights now, but it wasn't something he was looking forward to.
Bian looked at the Emperical Aura which was frozen on their armor.
With a sneer followed by a wave of his hands, the Emperical Aura bypassed all their restrictions and went into their bodies as well.
After experiencing the restriction from both the outside and the inside, breaking through it was a piece of cake.
The Stone Knights saw their dust clouds were ineffective and two of them controlled the cloud to reform around their swords, changing them into shields.
"They can do that too?"
As Bian was discreetly waiting for his throbbing headache to settle down, he saw something that left him absolutely gobsmacked.
Two Stone Knights jumped into the air and fell on the badly damaged Number Thirteen.
BOOM!
The entire valley trembled and even Bian almost lost his footing. Number Thirteen was crushed to powder.
[Gold Solum Mirror]
[Retaliation: 700/700]
[Soul Capacity: 60/700]
Looking at the Soul Counter jump to sixty when Number Thirteen died, Bian no longer saw an army of Nine-tailed Scorpion Golems.
Instead, he seemed to be looking at a brood of chickens.
The Numbered Series were made of golems that had already absorbed the strength of eight more fallen comrades. Their strength may not measure up to the Stone Knights, but the souls they held were heavier.
"Well, I can't exterminate my own forces just for benefits. At least not yet."
As Bian looked up, the last four Stone Knights finally made an appearance.
Fifteen against nine, but unfortunately the fifteen were weaker, even with more numbers.
"I should be able to do it now."
The strongest move in Bian's arsenal was the Super Spank. It wasn't something he liked to show off often and most times it couldn't be used due to his fitness being too low.
Right now, the Altering Brush was a gemstone geno core though. This meant Bian could potentially incorporate Super Spank into an attack as long as certain requirements were met.
The God Killing Slash, with all its flare and fancy, was ultimately just an extended sword attack. Although the effects of Super Spank would drastically reduce without physical contact, that wouldn't be a problem for his ultimate move.
It was so sharp after all that it could force an opening in most substance chains.
The indigo light was ubiquitous, but Bian's focus was singled out on the second Stone Knight.
It was the only Stone Knight that was damaged right now and relatively still. With so many more Knights arriving, the Numbered Series had to turn away their attention from this damaged Stone Knight.
The injured Stone Knight was on a single knee, about to stand up before it saw Bian approach it recklessly.
It let out a great cloud of dust. They swarmed toward Bian like a ravenous swarm; however, the wave simply passed him by like he wasn't there.
The Stone Knight saw its attack pass him by, yet it remained unperturbed. Like a machine, it slowly raised the longsword and thrust it towards him.
"Found it!"
At the same time, Bian brandished the Edge of Ruin in a diagonal arc, letting out a True God Killing Slash.
SWOOSH!
His attack left later but struck first, while the sword of the Stone Knight deviated ever so slightly and brushed by his body.
"Second one down."