Both of them were peak sixth level mortal realm, so the Inception Spiritrial Arena didn’t do anything to limit their cultivation. They quickly clashed against each other thousands of times in the span of a breath.
The crowd’s eyes were glued to the arena in front of them. Even the eternal overlords ready to depart from the divine sects and set out for the underworld put their expedition on hold. This had to do with the glory and honor of the nine divine sects, their very future was at stake! It was much more important than conquering the underworld.
If the nine divine sects possessed their own sovereigns, then it wouldn’t be that difficult to destroy the worlds.
Boom!
A huge explosion rang out from the arena as part of the void collapsed, forcing the two figures apart.
“So that’s all you’ve got, prince of Inception Palace.” A sneer formed at the lips of the water elemental disciple. “I’d thought these sacred princes and princesses were much stronger than us, but it turns out that there’s not much to you at all. Or is it that the sacred palaces actually want to return our title to us?”
Frowns rose and fell in the crowd at his jeering and the Inception disciples were even more disbelieving. They’d personally seen Lu Yun defeat Luo Chen with a single blow on another arena!
But for some reason, he was evenly matched with this water elemental disciple!
The six monarchs looked at each other, all of them reading amusement in each other’s eyes.
……
Lu Yun didn’t respond; the sword he’d formed from the power of inception had been shattered in the exchange. He materialized another copy and pointed it at his opponent.
“Your Highness, if that’s all you got, you can go die now,” the disciple sniggered at Lu Yun. And then…
He burst apart like a water ripple, filling the air with water droplets that then coalesced back into copies of himself and charged Lu Yun at the same time. Thousands of him filled the void, each of them just as real as the others. There was no telling which were fake, or perhaps they were all real!
“Mirror images!” Lu Yun sucked in a sharp breath at the dense horde in front of him, vanishing with a quick turn of his body before they arrived.
Bam!
A muffled impact echoed from the void and the thousands of copies winked out of existence, leaving room for the water elemental disciple to crash to the ground. His aura was already beginning to dissipate.
“How… is… this possible…” He stared accusingly at Lu Yun.
“I would much prefer a face to face battle, but you prefer these underhanded tricks with a million openings to them,” sighed Lu Yun. “Mirror images are but mirror images in the end, and there’s only one of you.”
“How did you identify me?!” screamed the disciple as he clung to life with sheer force of will, refusing to die.
“Um… have you ever looked in a mirror?” Lu Yun looked down at his defeated opponent and waggled his brows. “The images in a mirror are the reverse of the real thing.”
Pah!
The water elemental disciple spat out a mouthful of blood and died. He’d died from a sudden surge of anger.
The mirror image combat art made use of water as a mirror to cast shadows of the wielder, then used the shadows as the basis for a projection. The projections possessed almost the same power as the wielder.
This was the chaos, a place where no one would spend their days looking into a mirror and studying what was within it. Therefore, Lu Yun quickly grasped the greatest flaw in this almost invincible combat art, easily defeating the opponent.
Beneath the arena, some of the other water elemental disciples that practiced the combat art paled with horror and quickly examined their mirror images.
Indeed, they were all reversed.
……
“Next,” Lu Yun uttered after inhaling deeply. Someone had already removed the water elemental disciple’s corpse.
“Prince of Inception Palace, are you sure you wish to continue?” Those of the nine divine sects shook their heads. “That man was a middle of the pack disciple in the water elemental divine sect and not a terribly outstanding one. If it wasn’t for your slippery ways, you seem to have only been able to barely match him.
“In our divine sects, geniuses number by the hundred million. There are too many to count of those who can easily crush him with one hand.” The speaker was an eternal overlord and he looked at Lu Yun with a hint of mockery.
“Then have those geniuses come on up and easily crush me with one hand.” Lu Yun seemed to be oblivious to the derision; he was thinking over his Dragonrise. He’d dug into the deeper parts of the Dragonquake Scripture and wanted to somehow meld that with the Myriad Inception Fist, making them both part of his sword dao.
However, the Dragonquake Scripture was so profound that the slightest miscalculation would assimilate his sword dao instead. Obviously, this would be the exact opposite of what Lu Yun wanted.
As strong as the scripture was, it was still someone else’s method. Only one’s own dao belonged to oneself. This was why Lu Yun’s sword dao had appeared a bit clumsy earlier, resulting in his draw with a mediocre divine sect disciple.
“Since Inception wishes to fight to the death, then I shan’t stand on ceremony.” A second disciple hopped onto the arena. “Huo Zongxing of the fire origin divine sect. Greetings to the prince of Inception Palace.”
Lu Yun’s second opponent was a young man also at sixth level mortal realm. He bowed at Lu Yun with an urbane demeanor, but frenzied passion brimmed in his eyes. Whoever killed Lu Yun now would be the hero of the nine divine sects and be known throughout the chaos!
“Eh,” Lu Yun sighed gently when he looked at Huo Zongxing. “Perhaps you guys didn’t understand me. This arena can suppress or raise everyone’s cultivation level to sixth level mortal realm. It isn’t that only those in the sixth level can challenge me.
“You won’t do.” He shook his head at the newcomer.
One of his golden warriors had ended up in the fire origin land and he knew Huo Zongxing well. Though he was also hailed a genius, only a rotten interior filled a jade exterior. The man was trash coated in gold and there was no value in fighting him.
“How dare you look down on me!” Irritation bloomed in Huo Zongxing’s heart from the snub and he summoned a blazing longsword, taking a flying leap toward Lu Yun.
Bam!
Lu Yun raised a foot, stomped right onto Huo Zongxing’s chest and kicked him off the arena.
“If I say you won’t do, then you won’t do. It doesn’t matter whether you can or not.” Lu Yun quirked his lips at Huo Zongxing.
This disciple was one of Huo Shentong’s nephews and used his uncle’s influence for all manner of wrongdoing in the divine sect. Others refrained from taking him to task out of consideration for his uncle, which gave him the misconception that he was actually a genius.
Huo Zongxing struggled to his feet and glared viciously at Lu Yun, fleeing the scene amid loud roars of laughter. The fire origin delegation was beet red with humiliation and Huo Shentong itched to slap this good-for-nothing nephew of his to death.
