Nexus Ascension: My Comprehension Defies the Heaven

Chapter 364: Greetings, Emperor

It wasn’t a simple afterimage. His body divided into sixteen distinct, simultaneous frames. General Chen’s eyes went wide, his brain failing to process the visual anomaly.

[Projection Frame] allowed one’s action to follow the rules of sixteen frames. If an evolver could only jump once in one second, then with the Projection Frame, they could do it sixteen times in the same duration. It was a multiplication of reality.

Before Chen could even blink, a hand clamped over his skull.

Boom!

Grey dragged Chen’s head down, driving it into the earth. However, the ground didn’t give way. Grey had flooded the soil with Nexus energy, reinforcing it into an anvil that refused to crack.

The only thing that could break was Chen.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The sound was a sickening, rhythmic crunch. Grey slammed him down with the speed of the frames, sixteen impacts raining down in a blur as frames flickered rapidly around Grey.

By the time the assault paused, silence returned to the crater.

General Chen’s face was no longer a face but a ruin. The eye sockets were hollow craters, the eyes crushed into paste within the skull. His nose was gone, and his teeth had been pulverized into white powder, driven deep into a jaw that had caved completely into his throat.

”You monster! Unhand General Chen immediately!”

The roar tore through the smoke, followed by a shockwave that cleared the lingering dust. The City Magistrate of Taihong City had arrived.

His pressure was so intense that his silk upper robes instantly disintegrated, revealing a torso of coiled, iron-hard muscle scarred from a century of battles. A long katana materialized in his grip, the steel instantly wreathed in screaming crimson flames.

He vanished.

One step. That was all it took to cross the crater. He reappeared directly in front of Grey, eyes wide, calm, and deadly. The blade was already descending toward Grey’s throat, the heat intense enough to singe the air.

Grey didn’t blink.

He casually lifted his hand.

The world seemed to stagnate. The flames on the katana froze in mid-flicker. The Magistrate’s ferocious momentum turned into a crawl. Grey’s eyes glowed with an eerie, colorless light as he watched the blade inch toward him.

Grey raised two fingers in a simple sword-finger gesture. He flicked his wrist to the side, like shooing a fly.

Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!

Invisible blades, sharp enough to cut space itself, danced across the Magistrate’s body. His shoulders, chest, and thighs split open simultaneously. It looked as if his body was being dismantled by an unseen butcher.

”Impossible!”

The City Magistrate stumbled back, his eyes bloodshot with shock. Blood sprayed from a dozen deep wounds, turning the ash beneath him into mud. He grit his teeth, channeling his energy frantically.

”Furnace Core, ignite!”

A green healing light tried to knit his flesh back together. But the instant the light touched the wounds, it turned black.

Bleugh!

He coughed up a mouthful of dark, viscous blood. His body wasn’t healing. The wounds were rotting. The edges of the cuts turned grey and necrotic, spreading like a virus.

”Is this the power of the Death Cycle Imprint you got from comprehending the Law of Death?” Fragment’s voice echoed in Grey’s mind.

”Yep,” Grey replied shortly, stepping over the burning katana on the ground.

He walked toward the kneeling old man, his left hand still gripping the ankle of General Chen. The General was limp, his cells dried up and his face a ruined mash of bone and gristle, dragging across the dirt like a broken doll.

”The death imprint allows me to stop others from regenerating and also steal life force from others to replenish my energy reserves,” Grey said with a grin as he arrived next to the City Magistrate.

His eyes flashed golden for a second. He had activated the Fate Insight to see what sort of person the magistrate was.

From what he observed, he was a good person.

”We share no enmity, yet you went for the head even without confirming whether I am a human or not properly. But I guess that’s fair. I was beating up an important figure of this continent, so it would be natural to treat me as an enemy,”

”You will not get away with this, demon,” the City Magistrate said with gritted teeth. ”If you lay a hand on General Chen, then the Emperor himself will descend. General Chen is the former prince of the Yellow Dragon Kingdom and His Majesty’s brother.”

Grey blinked hearing this.

Then, a cold smile formed on his face.

”This man-child that just eliminated millions of lives just for the sake of winning is a former prince?” Grey sneered. ”Then so be it.”

Crack!

Grey’s hand flickered with a multi-colored flame. The heavenly fire.

Boom!

At the same time, the Flame of Entropy formed and along with the heavenly flame shot directly into General Chen’s body.

”Arghhhh!” A scream of agony tore through General Chen.

Grey could now use the Flame of Entropy, and it had some terrifying effects aside from healing his own body. It inflicted torturous pain upon anyone it made contact with. It would twist the cells slowly, corrode them, and put the entire body into disorder, causing excruciating pain.

”I don’t need to leave behind a life that takes millions for his own goals. And more importantly, he attacked me when I did nothing wrong,” Grey added.

Amidst the horror of the City Magistrate, General Chen’s body disintegrated, and he directly fell unconscious.

”Why did you leave him, Grey?” Fragment asked curiously as he eyed the Magistrate.

”He hadn’t done many bad deeds,” Grey said . ”The only reason I killed the other man in the first place is because of his nature. It’s pitch black.”

”Ha... Although it’s a pity I couldn’t rescue Captain Han,” the fragment added. ”Rest in peace, Captain Han. I will miss him. I used his body for a week after all. Maybe i’ll resurrect him after becoming full again.”

”Sure,” Grey replied while rolling his eyes.

Then, the fragment revolved around Grey, and a frown appeared on his face.

”Grey, I sense someone is probing us.”

”Yep, there is someone probing us,” Grey replied.

Grey’s alien-like eyes flickered as his lesser heaven and the saintly halo surged out. The halo enhancement of the sainthood immediately became effective as circuit patterns formed rapidly across Grey’s body and arms while his antenna-like horns glowed with silver and purple highlights.

Nexus Overclock, 400%.

And it wasn’t done just yet.

Suddenly, a purple-black aura revolved around Grey. A thin layer of purple aura formed around him as his hair shot straight up for a split second before returning to normal, but it was now fully white. His eyebrows also changed color to white.

He turned to the east.

”Greetings, Emperor of Yellow Dragon Kingdom.”

Crack!

As soon as he spoke, distance itself became irrelevant as Grey’s body crossed over a long distance within a split second.

He was now inside a golden palace with rows of armored powerhouses at the 3rd Rank present. On the throne, there sat a man with cold and detached eyes.