Chapter 530: The Limit Of Form

Chapter 530: The Limit Of Form



The cloaked man stood frozen, pearls of sweat rolling down his face. The wind had somehow managed to take down the hood of his cloak, gently brushing against his matte blonde hair.

The windswept hair conjured a hopeless visage with his thin maroon eyeballs. His mouth was slightly open, despair slowly contorting his face.

Northern, however, just stared with cold indifference, the point of his sword slightly touching the wooden ground of the ship's deck.

Silence wafted tensely between the two of them as the man was not sure what to do.

His mind screamed in utter disarray,

'No, no, no, no, no, this was not how this was supposed to go. We had planned this for days; this was only supposed to be a preliminary stage of what is to come. How could things go so wrong? I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, he's going to kill me.'

An even stronger despair began to rise in his head. One that seemed to totally consume the one Northern had inflicted upon him.

His eyes slowly contorted and began to find their flames again; the flames this time were madder, burning with rage.

"What have you done?!" The man screamed, grabbing his cloak and swiping it off his body with a single flip of his hand.

In his right hand, a silvery shower of sparks was already swirling.

Northern observed the man and his hand before taking one hand, using his pinky finger to clean off the dirt on his face with an irritated expression.

Then he straightened his hand as a sleek, midnight black greatsword with a shimmering silver edge manifested into it.

The hilt of the sword was dark, with subtle engravings that seemed to shift, almost as though they were alive, reacting to the mental state of its holder.

Before Northern's eyes, there was almost a stark resemblance that it bore to the living wood of the soul vessel. Like a living metal.

Northern narrowed his eyes and lazily extended the Dark Mortal forward.

"Like I said when I first arrived. You have only one sin, which is attacking a ship that I am on. Now, I don't care who you work for or what you and your folks were staging. But curse your fates that you happened to cross paths with me."

He paused a second, his eyes radiating a cold wickedness as he evaluated the man.

"Sometimes, coincidences can be quite brutal on plans." He shook his head in pity towards the man and swung his sword to one side before getting into stance, getting ready to give the man his own fair share of... death.

The man gritted his teeth, his face folded by a searing hot rage. He swung his sword to the side horizontally and dashed at Northern.

Northern's eyes widened the moment the man moved. Contrary to what one would have thought...

It was almost playful-the way Northern danced around each attack with minimal effort, his movements relaxed, fluid.

But Northern's mind was far from idle. As the clash continued, he was learning.

The cloaked man's movements were not just raw power; they were calculated.

Each attack carried weight, but it wasn't mindless.

There was a rhythm to his strikes, a pattern that Northern was slowly unraveling.

The man was fast, yes, but predictable-his attacks followed through in traditional arcs.

It was powerful swordsmanship, but Northern realized that power could be the man's

weakness.

A smirk tugged at Northern's lips as he realized something from the man's attack pattern.

'It has a form.'

This man, despite his rage and desperation, was bound by the structure of his form. Northern, however, could be anything-he could be nothing.

If the man's attack pattern wasn't based on a form, Northern felt the man would have been more of an opponent to him.

But was it possible to create an attack pattern without form? A combat style that is ever- bending, ever-changing, ever-flexible, ever-evolving?

Although Northern never allowed himself to be tied down by the rigidity of traditional techniques, his movements, guided by instinct and Chaos Footwork, were ever-changing.

But it wasn't enough!

Somehow, his mind for some reason drifted towards the formless attribute.

He remembered his encounter with Hao and how he had used formless to copy the attack

pattern of the devil corpse eater.

But he wasn't interested in copying his opponent's attack patterns.

His opponent's combat style was weak and useless against him for a reason; he wanted

something more.

What more could formless do that he was not thinking about?