Chapter 1016: Battle

"Because I'm not in the mood to stop today. No matter what I say, you don't trust me. You can't stop your son. The only way to save Mingyu is if I take some steps myself," Long Chen said. 

'It'll take a bit of time here to fight him. No matter what I say, he's strong indeed. But I've often fought with people one realm higher than me. It should be possible. He isn't god,' he thought as he started running towards the Emperor with the sword in his hand. 

This time he didn't intend to hold much back. He hadn't used his Demon Monarch Physique last time, but this time, he was going to use it right away. 

As he used the Demon Monarch Physique, Long Chen's physical strength increased by a lot right away. His Cultivation did augment his physical strength but not to the same extent as the Demon Monarch Physique, which in itself was a Physical Cultivation Skill. 

"Too much arrogance!" the Emperor snorted as he waved his sword casually to counter Long Chen's attack. 

Two swords clashed with each other. The Saint Grade Sword of the Emperor that looked like a proper high-grade weapon clashed with the Sword of Time of Long Chen, which happened to look nowhere near to a high-grade weapon, let alone a god grade weapon. 

The two weapons clashed with each other. When the Emperor had attacked, his expressions were calm and unphased, but as soon as the two swords clashed, his expressions changed as he found himself overwhelmed by the brute strength he faced. 

The clash resulted in him losing balance and having to take two steps back to balance himself. Long Chen, on the other hand, stood his group, instead only taking the lead as he swung his sword once again. 

"If that's the way you want to do it, then fine!" The Emperor said strongly as he clenched his sword firmly. He also started using as much strength he could use without holding anything back. 

Previously, he hadn't felt the need to use his full strength. In his eyes, Long Chen was a kid who couldn't stand his ground against him even when the two of them were on the same cultivation level, let alone now when he was higher. That made him go easy, feeling like he wouldn't need to put much effort. 

Another clash happened as the Emperor defended his shoulder, which was being targeted by Long Chen. He hastily moved his sword to change the trajectory of Long Chen's attack. After successfully protecting his shoulder, the Emperor countered the attack.

He attacked the hilt of Long Chen's sword to make him drop the sword. The sword felt to have a mysterious power. The Emperor didn't like it. He felt like it was because of the Sword that Long Chen was able to overwhelm him last time.

In his head, Long Chen was only strong with the sword. Without it, he could easily be taken down. So he targeted the sword. 

Seeing the attack coming towards the hilt of the Sword of Time, Long Chen used his footwork as he swung his body as if he was dancing with the wind, dodging the attack while simultaneously attacking the Emperor in return. 

"Just how fast are these two?"

"I can't even see anything but shadows? I can understand his Majesty, but how is that kid so fast as well?"

"God knows. I don't understand anything."

While Long Chen and the Emperor fought, the guards could only stay back and watch everything in amazement. This whole thing seemed surprising. Both the fighters were so fast that their eyes couldn't even keep up with their movements. 

All the guards saw were two shadows clashing with each other while moving as fast as lightning. 

The man who held the painting of the formation in his hand also stood in the back, amazed. He didn't know that one of the shadows was subtly looking at him occasionally. 

Long Chen knew that a long-term battle wasn't in his favor. If he wanted to win the battle, he only had a few ways. 

One was to use his Law of Space, but he couldn't use that. The second was to use his Law of Illusion to fool the Emperor, but that was also tough here. 

Even though he could use his Illusion, he needed to be looking at his enemy to be using it. Only when the people were in his line of view can he use illusion to affect them. 

Since there were guards on both sides of the hallway, he couldn't use that. Even if he used Illusion on the Emperor and it worked, the guards were still going to see the real him. They would inform the Emperor that it was an illusion. 

This trick was useless in a heavily crowded place where he was surrounded from both sides. 

The only other option he had was to use the Law of Darkness. But it wasn't the night. He couldn't use the Law of Darkness to disappear. All of this left only one option for him if he wanted to end the fight shortly. 

He could use Dark Sacrifice to increase his strength. He could let himself be swallowed by the incredible strength he felt last time, but that wasn't enough. It only meant that he might lose control later on. Even if he ignored the loss of one of his emotions because of using it a second time, that wasn't the biggest worry. 

The biggest worry of Long Chen was that he might lose control and destroy everything like he did last time. Even though he thought he might have a better control this time since he already went through this before, he didn't want to take the risk. 

'That's right. I can't affect the Emperor, but I can affect someone else,' he suddenly thought of a plan amidst fighting with the Emperor. 

Despite keeping his focus on the battle, he was simultaneously using it on other things as well. Finally, he managed to come up with an idea to make sure he wasn't on the backfoot in this battle. 

...

The man in the back was standing with the scroll of the formation in his hand that stopped Long Chen from using his Teleportation, trying to understand what was happening in the fight since everything was so fast. 

It was at that point; he saw the Emperor and Long Chen separate. The two of them stopped. While Long Chen breathed in heavily as if he was almost defeated and couldn't put up more fight, the Emperor seemed calm and composed.