Chapter 815: Monstrous Beings of the Tao: Yin and Yang
Creak~
The sound of the door being pushed open was excruciatingly shrill.
The young boy furrowed his brows. He caught the dense, metallic stench of blood. The light in the room, which was usually kept on, was dark and dead.
He glanced back at the light filtering in from the hallway. As long as he reached that brightness, he would probably be safe.
Yet living inside that damp, dreary basement were his parents and family!
After pondering for a brief moment, Liu Feng stepped inside. Due to financial struggles, his family lived in a cramped single-room unit converted from an underground storage cellar, everyone squeezed tightly together.
Because of this, even without any lights, he was intimately familiar with the narrow space. His shoes sloshed against liquid on the floor, producing wet, splashing sounds.
That was not merely blood. Even if his parents were bled completely dry, it could never accumulate to this depth.
"Oho. You clearly noticed the danger, yet you still walked right in."
"What a truly foolish child."
A flippant, mocking voice rang out. Liu Feng's instincts flared in shock, but he swiftly forced himself to calm down. He turned toward the figure seated on the sofa in the darkness. Without light, only a vague silhouette could be discerned.
"Mmh! Mmph—!"
A figure lying bound on the floor let out muffled, choked sobs. Liu Feng relaxed slightly; he recognized his father's voice.
"He's saying: my son isn't a foolish child, he's the cleverest boy there is~"
Whoosh!
As if natural gas had been ignited, a pale, eerie flame suddenly flared to life. Within the pitch-black room, the ghastly white fire was more than bright enough to illuminate everything.
Liu Feng saw that the man seated on the sofa was a young man with clean, short hair. He appeared around twenty years of age, extraordinarily handsome—if someone claimed he was a celebrity model, people would readily believe it.
Yet looking at the flame resting casually in his palm, this man was probably one of the "Ability Users" spoken of on television. Moreover... a decidedly malicious one.
Liu Feng felt certain he had seen this face somewhere. He combed through his memories, finally recalling a face that had appeared across various news broadcasts during the catastrophic disaster in Yingtian not long ago.
The rumored big shot who commanded legions of Ability Users across the neighboring nations surrounding Eastland.
Yet if he were truly an extraordinary figure of that stature, what business did he have in a home like this?
Liu Feng's brain spun at high speed. A prickling, tingling sensation on his scalp caused him to involuntarily lick his chapped lips. There were numerous split scabs on his lips; he evidently had a habit of doing this.
Soon, a familiar metallic taste entered his mouth, and Liu Feng felt his thoughts flow with even greater clarity.
He suddenly broke the silence:
"You've been abandoned by the government?"
"You're currently being hunted down."
"I think you aren't the genuine big shot from the propaganda broadcasts. You were merely pushed forward as a fraudulent figurehead. Now that the grand plan has failed—or perhaps someone discarded it—you have been rendered a useless pawn."
"In fact, because of your prior masquerade, you've deeply offended the true heavyweight."
The clone Kaito Shirogane, who had been lazily watching with amused, lowered eyelids, slowly lifted his gaze. He stared at the young boy who couldn't be more than ten years old. The boy's heart rate had already leveled back to normal. Even with a floor soaked in blood, even with his parents held captive by an unknown, dangerous Ability User...
This child of roughly ten years had completely regained his composure.
Not only that, but he had deduced the general outline of his precarious predicament.
This kid... possesses an extraordinary disposition!
The clone Kaito Shirogane had heard from the members of [Destiny] that the [King of Destiny] had recently been scouring the land for individuals possessing special aptitude.
He had originally sneered at such matters. Aptitude, talent, destiny—to him, these were the most tedious jokes imaginable.
From the instant of his birth, he was informed of his status as a mere clone. Despite possessing the exact same genetic sequence as that monster, he had walked toward an entirely different fate.
That person had become a colossal, suffocating shadow hanging over him.
Yet this boy, stumbled upon when he casually barged into a random home, gave the clone a profoundly bizarre premonition.
As though it was secretly ordained that he himself would guide this boy onto that fateful path.
Damn it... is this another underhanded scheme set up by that old bastard?
Have I unknowingly stepped into someone else's board once again?
The clone Kaito Shirogane's muscles tensed for a fraction of a second before completely relaxing. He was already backed into a corner; being dragged into another vortex hardly mattered to him anymore.
It would be best if that King of Monsters and the King of Destiny slaughtered each other into mutual annihilation!
The clone mused with reckless indifference.
Yet the very next moment, the ambient temperature plummeted violently. Crystals of frost coalesced out of thin air.
Before the clone Kaito Shirogane could react, a figure ripped through the fabric of space and manifested directly inside the cramped room.
A cascade of stark white hair, cut with razor-sharp precision, fell straight down almost grazing the ankles. The figure possessed heterochromatic eyes—one vivid crimson, the other brilliant azure.
It was an entity completely removed from any human likeness.
The Fourth Seat of Destiny: [White].
"This child cannot be handed over to him."
"Clone of Kaito Shirogane, if you wish to remain among the living, I can provide you with a way out."
BOOM!
Amidst the violent shaking of the island, a devastating shockwave practically flattened everything across the landmass.
Gnarled ancient trees, jagged primeval stones—everything was leveled by the cataclysmic light and heat descending from above.
A single strike of Kaito Shirogane's 500,000 Horsepower [World-Shaking Thunder Roar] violently stripped away the island's intricate camouflage.
Immediately afterward, a pale flush of fleshy color was exposed from beneath the leveled mountain peaks.
The gargantuan tree root he held in his grasp had snapped clean through. Across the surface of the shattered earth, countless massive root systems exposed by the pulverized mountains were frantically recoiling inward.
Like a mass of panicked tentacles retreating deep into a body.
Kaito Shirogane saw the island's true form with absolute clarity: two colossal, intertwined humanoid beings embracing each other.
Both possessed snow-white skin, bearing male and female anatomical features respectively, coiled and fused together beneath the mantle of the island.
Everything that had previously rested above ground was merely a deceptive veil draped over their titanic forms.
Realizing he had uncovered the true quarry, Kaito Shirogane descended from the sky.
Instantly, a surge of mental will erupted from beneath the island, slamming against the shimmering AT Field on his body, entirely unable to penetrate deeper.
Vast torrents of Taoist Qi surged up from the subterranean depths, rapidly coalescing into a naked physical vessel.
The ambient will attached itself to this flesh.
A humanoid Tensen sporting seven-colored hair thus materialized before him.
"Exalted traveler from afar, why must you insist on making an enemy of me?"
"My younger sister and I merely secluded ourselves here to quietly cultivate the Tao. We have never sought to vie for that [Door]. How about I condense our Taoist Qi to grant you a respectable harvest of points, and you depart in peace?"
This humanoid Tensen spoke with extreme courtesy, maintaining a tone that was neither servile nor haughty.
Watching this display, Kaito Shirogane mused that if Son Goku had been the one to land here, he might have genuinely spared them due to their agreeable demeanor and humanoid appearance.
Son Goku loved food, but his nature was fundamentally gentle and benevolent.
Kaito Shirogane merely curled his lips into a wide, mocking grin and shook his head.
"A pity. You are the prey with the highest Gourmet Capture Level on this island. If I spare you, and that fellow hunts you down due to some unforeseen circumstance, wouldn't I lose any chance of guaranteeing my victory?"
From the very beginning, Kaito Shirogane had intended to cement his absolute victory before Son Goku could return.
To guarantee a one-hundred-percent advancement, the only foolproof method was to exterminate and harvest every single piece of prey on this island.
Otherwise, once Son Goku returned, any quarry he desired would turn into his points.
Kaito Shirogane's merciless decisiveness rendered the seven-colored Tensen briefly silent.
Suddenly, even more dense Taoist Qi billowed from the subterranean fissures.
Thick moisture saturated the air, rapidly freezing into reflective mirrors of ice.
Beams of light refracted through the ice mirrors, projecting various dynamic scenes.
In one mirror, swarms of mechanical drones were besieging a glowing magical boundary. Inside the barrier, a titanic wolf repeatedly spewed frost breath toward the heavens.
Beside it, another figure wielded potent cryogenic powers to hold the line.
Those were the Reincarnators, suffering an assault from the Machina Court.
In another projection, a cluster of divine Contractors gleaming with diverse divine energies gathered together, chanting sacred scriptures as divine power pooled in the sky to etch an elaborate deity crest.
Those Contractors were evidently channeling a summoning rite or calling for higher-tier reinforcement.
Each frozen pane displayed critical clashes occurring across different sectors of this world.
"Your kin are currently facing mortal peril. The outsiders invading this world have all recognized the existence of the [Door]. Falling behind right now guarantees absolute ruin."
"An entity of your caliber must surely grasp the profound weight of these stakes."
The island's Tensen appealed to reason and emotion, attempting once more to dissuade Kaito Shirogane.
It was about to channel its powers further to project visions of the future, but a wave of unrestrained malice erupted without warning.
The Tensen whipped its head around, only to see violent air currents churning the atmosphere behind that monstrously powerful human martial artist.
Its own Taoist Qi, along with the atmospheric winds outside the island, was being dragged into a colossal whirlpool.
Within Kaito Shirogane's eyes, a multi-colored radiance flared.
An insatiable greed that sought to plunder every conceivable benefit under heaven.
"So... you know where that [Door] is, don't you?!"
"No—you are intimately connected to that very [Door]!"
Kaito Shirogane never believed for a second that a monster native to an isolated dimensional pocket could possess the capability to observe events across disparate spatial coordinates.
Even he could not achieve such comprehensive cross-realm omniscience. How could a creature that was distinctly weaker than him pull it off?!
Kaito Shirogane lifted his leg high and, under the seven-colored Tensen's horrified gaze, stomped brutally downward.
BOOM!
Terrifying kinetic force detonated in an instant. The earth fractured from a single epicenter before violently exploding outward.
The soil billowed upward like wheat waves in a gale, stripping away every shred of deception veiling the colossal horrors beneath.
MROOOOOH!
A monstrous, non-human sonic boom erupted alongside the devastation.
Concentrated shockwaves blasted out in violent rings.
The AT Field across Kaito Shirogane's skin flared with blinding light. The surrounding atmosphere fractured into fish-scale clouds of smoke as an apocalyptic concussive force hurled his body flying off the island.
Yet as Kaito Shirogane spun backward through the air, his eyes remained locked onto the two humanoid abominations uncovered beneath the island's core.
The male and female colossi were each over a thousand meters in length, their bodies bone-white, exuding a radiant, lustrous luminescence.
Kaito Shirogane surmised that was the so-called [Taoist Qi].
This layer of Qi acted as an absolute sensory veil; electrical currents striking against it were completely swallowed.
At this moment, both monsters opened their eyes simultaneously: one possessed eyes of pure white, while the other's eyes were abyssal black.
Both tilted their massive heads, gazing up at Kaito Shirogane suspended in the sky.
The next instant, two beams of piercing light tore through the heavens.
Kaito Shirogane's form dissolved like a mirage, but the twin beams seemed to strike a barrier mid-air and refracted straight back.
Without glancing behind him, Kaito Shirogane drove a single fist backward.
BOOM!
The concussive shockwave yielded an explosive detonation.
Immediately following, contrasting black and white light bathed the billowing clouds of dust.
A violent, rhythmic pulse rippled across the surrounding space.
[You have encountered the Special Monstrous Being: Taoism · Yin]
[You have encountered the Special Monstrous Being: Taoism · Yang]
The pure black and pure white eyes shifted rapidly, meeting each other's gaze. Between those two pairs of colossal eyes, fluttering within the violent gales in his dark green trench coat, the human martial artist materialized right between them.
Kaito Shirogane spread his arms wide as intertwining pitch-black and crimson cursed energy surged forth.
His eyes shifted in an instant, adopting the pattern of clear blue skies and white clouds.
The Authority of the [Emperor of Death] manifested, allowing him to perfectly replicate the core traits and abilities of his bound spirit, Satoru Gojo.
The Limitless technique flared to life. Backed by his twisted, frenzied cursed energy, a colossal repulsive force detonated outward.
In his Martial God's Ultimate Intent state, Kaito Shirogane's hyper-intuition laid bare the fatal vulnerability of these foes.
Yin and Yang—these twin entities recognized by the Space as Monstrous Beings of the Tao—clearly possessed a mutual protection mechanism when joined together.
His instincts screamed that they had to be torn apart.
Struck by the ferocious repulsive blast, the bodies of Taoism · Yang and Taoism · Yin were blasted apart toward opposite sides of the ocean before they could even stand.
Terrifying Taoist Qi instantly ran rampant within their bodies.
The sheer volume of Taoist Qi was something neither entity could balance alone; it required harmonious Yin-Yang equilibrium to wield.
Kaito Shirogane pointed his index fingers toward both sides simultaneously.
Screech!
Two Dodon Rays lanced through the air, piercing clean through the foreheads of both colossal horrors at almost the exact same instant.
"Scanning primary anomaly node: combat intensity moderate. [Door] characteristics have not manifested."
"Scanning secondary anomaly node: combat intensity low. [Door] manifestation criteria unmet. Dispatching mechanical legions to escalate combat intensity..."
"Scanning tertiary anomaly node: combat intensity high. [Door] characteristics absent. Eliminating tertiary node from probability matrix."
The moment Ultron realized that the Reincarnators also possessed inter-spatial teleportation capabilities, he decisively abandoned the battlefield at Node Five.
He allowed those Authority-tier Machina Court combatants to serve as sacrificial prey for [Heaven's Pilgrimage].
He had disengaged entirely to seek out the truly priceless prize.
"Scanning Node Eight: combat intensity extreme. [Door] characteristics—detected!"
"Locking onto Node Eight anomaly. Transitioning visual feed..."
Ultron's computational core had already retrieved the visual records. Countless nanobots merged in the air, forming a high-grade observation unit.
On the screen, two flesh-and-blood giants thousands of meters tall were being hurled in opposite directions into the sea by a single human, followed by distant phantom punches whose vacuum waves blasted both titans into clouds of blood mist.
"Mercenary Tao..."