Chapter 2765: Corey’s Gambit, Emperor’s Fear

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Zhongguo (China), Liaodong Province, Shuntian Prefecture, Shenyang City, Imperial Palace, Inner Court

A chain of explosions echoed throughout the palace as the Emperor pursued Corey through shattered halls and collapsing corridors. Firelight flashed through broken archways, and waves of heat rolled across the marble floors with every detonation.

To most of the palace residents who heard the destruction, it seemed as if the Emperor was chasing the resurrected Thirteenth Concubine, now reborn within the conjoined body of her children, the infamous abomination of Zhong Guo. That was the story they heard from those that witnessed it in the inner court.

Meanwhile, the two at the center of the chaos were doing something far more deliberate. They were testing their own limits against the other. With each clash they learned a little more about themselves. Each exchange sharpened their understanding of the fight ahead. But their intentions could not have been more different. One wanted to rape the other. The other intended to kill him.

"Fuck it!" Corey shouted as she suddenly came to a halt having understood the core of the Emperor’s technique.

Using his Chivalry, he could shift his body between the void and the physical space almost at will. His control over the ability was disturbingly precise. Most of his body would slip into the void, leaving nothing behind for her senses or mental field to detect. Then, at the final instant, only a part of his fist would reappear. Just enough to strike. Because of that, Corey could not sense the attack coming. The fist quite literally did not exist until the moment it landed.

Now she understood why he called the technique Empty Fist. Until the moment of impact, it was nothing. And there was another problem. The Emperor had always possessed explosive physical strength, but now that strength had grown far beyond what she remembered. Even the power her newly reborn conjoined body could summon was struggling to keep up with the force behind his blows.

Corey quickly concluded that whatever devil the Emperor had made a contract with was powerful. That meant the demonic forces pushing into their world were far stronger than she had hoped. She knew enough about them to recognize the signs.

During her years studying witchcraft, she had learned of these entities and the knowledge they possessed. She had even dealt with them herself a few times. They were cunning, ancient, and incredibly powerful. But every bargain with them came with a price so steep it could ruin a life, a kingdom, or their world itself.

Corey had refused to pay those prices as her ambition had always been to defeat death through her own means, not by selling pieces of herself to something lurking beyond the veil.

Through the rolling explosions around her, she searched for the Emperor. But she couldn’t sense him. Then it happened again. Out of nowhere, the Emperor’s fist slammed into her face. The moment it struck, Corey reacted instantly. Without hesitation, she diced the air molecules surrounding that portion of her head while tightening her mental field around her face and the rest of her body.

The violent reaction detonated immediately. The resulting explosion blasted outward as Corey was thrown back by the Emperor’s punch. Because she had already shifted her mental field and body away from the center of the reaction, she barely managed to avoid being caught in the worst of the blast.

But the Emperor’s fist remained inside the explosion. When the smoke cleared, it emerged completely intact. Not a single scratch marked the golden scale armor covering his hand.

Seeing that Corey was ruthless enough to detonate the air around her own face just to damage him, the Emperor finally stepped fully out of the void. The golden armor around him gleamed through the fading smoke as he looked toward the debris ahead, where Corey’s body lay half-buried under shattered stone.

"I don’t need to shift into the void to avoid your explosions," he said calmly. "My scale armor is more than enough to withstand them."

With that, he walked forward into the rubble. Ahead of him, Corey pushed the broken stone off her body and slowly rose to her feet. Dust slid from her shoulders as she steadied herself, eyes locked onto the Emperor.

Liao Long watched her carefully, understanding that if Corey continued resorting to desperate tactics like earlier, she might end up destroying the very body he had waited so many years to reclaim.

He could defeat her easily by relying on his void shift alone. But that wasn’t what he wanted. What would be the point of all this if the body he desired ended up ruined? How could he repay the humiliation she had once forced upon him if the prize itself was broken?

Seeing even his armor was already proving strong enough to endure her explosions. He had already decided what he wanted to do next. He would face her directly.

He stepped closer, preparing to engage Corey in close combat without relying on his void shift to evade her attacks. It was a far riskier approach, but it allowed him to subdue her without destroying the body he had obsessed over for so many years.

"Hahaha," Corey let out a chuckle as she pushed herself back onto her feet while using conjoin across her face and the damaged parts of her body. Flesh and bone quietly realigned under the subtle pull of her second chivalry, bruised tissue knitting itself back together as if rewound by invisible threads.

In her previous life, she had never been pushed to such a miserable state. Yet here she was now, battered and bleeding, and the one responsible for it was the last person she would have expected. The dipshit Emperor.

Once the last of the pain faded and her body settled back into place, Corey lifted her gaze and acted immediately. She began dicing the air molecules surrounding the Emperor. One split triggered another, then another, until the space around him became a violent chain reaction. Explosions ignited in rapid succession, turning the entire corridor into a continuous storm of fire and blinding light.

To anyone watching, it looked like an endless tide of detonations swallowing the Emperor whole. But Liao Long kept walking. Step by step, he advanced through the inferno. The golden scale armor covering his body glowed under the relentless heat. Even surrounded by explosions powerful enough to melt steel, he forced his way forward, pushing against the violent shockwaves like a man walking upstream through a raging tide. Slowly, steadily, he closed the distance between them.

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