For the first time, Hong Nianyi’s Illusion faltered, its movements clearly sluggish.

On the left arm of the faint golden figure, the Dark Gold Flame burned, quiet but stubborn, constantly eroding the Energy that formed her body.

She "glanced down" at the flame on her arm. Her blurry face seemed to turn, "looking" toward Xu Wuyi once more.

Her gaze seemed to hold a hint of... scrutiny.

Barely a minute had passed since the battle began.

Xu Wuyi was drenched in his own blood. Blade marks covered his shoulders, chest, stomach, and legs, some so deep they exposed bone. His Qi and Blood were being consumed at a ferocious rate.

But he had succeeded.

He had planted the Undying Flame on his opponent.

Sure enough, the movements of Hong Nianyi’s Illusion had become sluggish.

The flame clung to her like a tenacious poison, burning without end and forcing her to divert a portion of her Spirit to resist it.

This was Xu Wuyi’s only chance!

He took a deep breath, ignoring the searing pain from his wounds, and pushed his remaining Qi and Blood and Spiritual Power to their absolute limit.

Within his sea of consciousness, the two dormant True Intentions—"Mountain" and "Burn"—erupted like sparks hitting boiling oil, instantly flaring into a raging torrent!

The Intention of the Mountain: majestic, heavy, bearing all things.

The Intention of Burning: blazing, radiant, purging all things.

Under the extreme pressure of a life-and-death battle, spurred on by the sliver of hope that the successfully planted Undying Flame provided, the two completely different Mental Realms began to collide and merge at an unprecedented speed!

Xu Wuyi could almost hear a roar from the depths of his soul.

The long spear in his hands became impossibly heavy and scorching hot.

Along the spear’s shaft, crimson Qi and Blood and the Dark Gold Flame entwined in a frenzy. An indescribably terrifying aura began to brew and surge!

Hong Nianyi’s Illusion seemed to sense the mortal threat as well.

She stopped trying to dispel the flame on her left arm, instead condensing all her Spirit and power into the "blade" forming in her right hand’s grip.

The indistinct shape of the blade suddenly grew sharper.

A piercing True Intention, one that could shatter all creation, surged skyward!

The blade had not yet struck, but its Intention had already arrived.

The entire challenge space seemed to freeze for a moment, the air thick with a hair-raising sharpness.

She was about to strike.

This would be no ordinary strike. It was a blow that condensed every ounce of True Intention she could currently muster, even simulating the embryonic form of a Heart Image!

Even if it couldn’t compare to the "Life and Death" technique from the youth tournament, it was far beyond what any ordinary Martial Artist could withstand.

Xu Wuyi knew the next move would decide it all.

He could not retreat. There was no path of retreat.

Countdown: [01:47]

One minute and forty-seven seconds remained, but he no longer cared about the clock.

His eyes saw only the faint golden figure before him and the impending strike that seemed capable of sundering heaven and earth.

"Come on!"

Xu Wuyi let out a low roar. He stopped suppressing the two boiling True Intentions in his sea of consciousness, instead actively guiding them to smash into some unseen, predestined "point"!

BOOM—!

A cataclysmic sound, like the birth of a new world, exploded in the depths of his soul.

It wasn’t a real sound, but a cataclysmic shift in his Mental Realm.

The ever-calm and stable True Intention of the Mountain and the brilliantly blazing True Intention of Burning—at this moment, within the Melting Furnace of life-and-death pressure, forged by Xu Wuyi’s unwavering will—finally shattered the formless barrier between them and began to fuse!

The mountain was no longer just the mountain, nor was the fire just the fire.

Instead, a brilliant sun now rose from the mountain’s peak!

The great sun’s light bathed the mountains, granting them the will for light, heat, and change. The immense mountains supported the great sun, granting its light a foundation of stability and depth.

A far grander and more complete Mental Realm erupted from Xu Wuyi!

VMMMM—!

In the physical world, a phenomenon manifested!

Behind Xu Wuyi, a hazy, indistinct phantom of a majestic, massive mountain suddenly materialized in the void!

And from its peak, a radiant sun, emitting endless light and heat, burst forth, bathing the entire challenge space in its brilliant and impartial rays!

The Sun on the Mountain’s Peak!

The manifestation of the preliminary fusion of Xu Wuyi’s own True Intention of Martial Arts!

The moment this phenomenon appeared, the piercing blade Intention condensed by Hong Nianyi’s Illusion was forcibly diminished by a third!

"Slash!"

A silent telepathic pulse emanated from the Illusion.

A streak of blade light, so condensed it seemed capable of cleaving light itself, finally slashed forth!

This strike lacked the profound mystery of the "Life and Death" technique from the youth tournament, but it was purer, more extreme. It compressed all power and True Intention onto the single line of the blade’s edge—unmatched in speed and sharpness, able to cut through anything!

At almost the exact same moment, Xu Wuyi unleashed his strongest spear thrust to date.

He didn’t use any specific Spear Technique.

It was just the simplest, most direct thrust.

At the tip of the spear, the phantom image of the sun on the mountain’s peak flashed.

The blade light and the spear tip met in the void with cataclysmic force!

There was no earth-shattering explosion.

For a moment, time seemed to stand still.

The next moment.

CRACK—!

The condensed blade light, like a wave crashing against a reef, began to form an infinitesimal crack at its very tip.

The crack spread rapidly, covering the entire streak of light in the blink of an eye.

But the Meteor Iron Long Spear, wreathed in newfound power, pushed steadily forward. The strange Energy at its tip was like the rising sun—unstoppable!

The blade light shattered.

It dissolved into a sky full of dancing, faint golden specks of light.

Hong Nianyi’s Illusion remained frozen in its striking posture.

The Undying Flame on her left arm had been extinguished, but a hole the size of a bowl had appeared in her chest. Around its edges, an interwoven energy of crimson and gold continued to slowly eat away at her.

She "glanced" at the hole in her chest, then "looked" toward the slowly fading phenomenon of the sun on the mountain’s peak behind Xu Wuyi. Her indistinct face seemed to shift slightly.

Then, the entire faint golden figure, like a weathered sand sculpture, crumbled away inch by inch, dissolving into a stream of the purest Energy that flowed back into the silver pedestal below.

The space above the pedestal was empty once more.

[01:38] 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

The countdown stopped at one minute and thirty-eight seconds.

Inside the challenge space, there was a dead silence.

The only sounds were Xu Wuyi’s ragged, wheezing breaths, like a blacksmith’s bellows, and the sizzle of Energy escaping from his wounds.

He remained in his spear-thrusting stance, his muscles trembling from the strain and his injuries.

’I won?’

’I... defeated the battle Illusion of Hong Nianyi from before she reached Level 35?’

’It was only because I planted the Undying Flame on her and had a breakthrough with my fused True Intention, but... I actually did it.’

He had defeated his opponent head-on before the three-minute time limit expired.

Vmm.

The crimson countdown in his vision vanished.

It was replaced by a line of soft, green text:

[Challenge Complete. Victor: Xu Wuyi.]

A cold, mechanical voice then echoed throughout the space:

[Challenger Xu Wuyi, at Life Energy Level 32.5, has defeated the historical record Illusion ’Hong Nianyi (Level 33 state)’. Time elapsed: 1 minute, 22 seconds.]

[Conditions met for special ’Red Star’ inclusion.]

[Updating ’Nine Stars Stele’ record...]