Chapter 269 269: Charred Bones



As Yoze reevaluated the power of immortal cultivators, he turned his focus back to the obsidian platform, which had been turned into a black void by Geo's Shadow Swamp. Even with Yoze's incredible senses, he couldn't see anything inside the void, and even the blood he had lost during the fight seemed to have been cut off from him.

As the fiery explosion began to clear, Yoze waited in the sky to see the results of his intense battle with Geo. At the same time, he kept his vigilance on high alert as he watched for Geo's counterattack.

As he expected, before the smoke and fire fully cleared, Yoze saw the dense swarm of shadow armor shards flying through the dust as if they were trying to find an invisible enemy. With the absorption properties of the shadow armor shards, the slurping sounds quickly filled the silent southern mountain as they absorbed the smoke and fire from the explosion.

"Slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp!" 

Within seconds the explosion that Yoze had sent all his crystal energy to create was quickly absorbed. With the smoke and fire absorbed, the entire platform was visible, allowing everyone to see the damages he had managed to cause.

As Yoze swept his gaze through the entire platform, he couldn't find a trace of Geo's body, and even pieces of his hair or soil couldn't be found. What disappointed Yoze the most was that Geo's Shadow Clone was still halfway fused with the Shadow Swamp with no signs of damage or instability.

Meaning that even after taking an explosion strong enough to wipe dozens of Blood Masters from the face of this world, Geo was still capable of fighting. There was even a high possibility that the damage that he was able to cause was barely a scratch for someone who highly modified his body like Geo.

"Brother Yoze, I must applaud you. I have been fighting you for so long and only managed to keep up with you using a combination of spells and martial art."

"Yet, you were able to rely only on your martial art skills to continue battling someone as strong as me. So it is clear to me that my skills in martial arts are far behind yours. I will admit my defeat on that front." Geo's smooth and deep voice seemed to have appeared out of nowhere as he showed his admiration for Yoze's martial art prowess.

"Your martial art prowess was so powerful that I had nearly forgotten that you were an immortal cultivator yourself, allowing you to ambush me with your fireball spell. If you had reached a higher realm than the Nerve Accumulation realm, you might have been able to defeat me just then." 

"If you had reached the Crystal Spine realm, at least you could have pulled out a better spell that would have killed me. But since we are talking about reality, I'll show you how much you accomplished with your current abilities." 

As Yoze listened to Geo speak, he couldn't help but feel that there was something strange about it. It lacked the powerful emotions hidden inside his voice that he had before. 

Instead, it was strangely calm and only allowed others to see the emotions that Geo allowed them to see. There was less nuance which gave Yoze a clue that even though the explosion wasn't powerful enough to defeat Geo, it must have at least damaged his vocal cords.

Paired with Geo's explanation that he still had the confidence to win this battle and his willingness to show the damage, Yoze couldn't help but feel excited to see what his first spell could have done in a real battle. Not letting Yoze's and the audience of immortal cultivators' excitement go to waste, a small black mound suddenly emerged from the vast Shadow Swamp.

On top of the Shadow Swamp mound was the upper half of Geo's body as he tried his best to smile. Unfortunately, half of his face was incinerated by the powerful, leaving behind nothing but black bones, and the other half was charred black to the point where it resembled charcoal.

So even though he tried his best to let out a gentle smile, all that happened was that his remaining face cracked, causing a chunk of it to fall off his face. What impressed Yoze and the crowd was that even with such severe damage to his head, Geo's hair remained luscious and undamaged.

It didn't take long before most immortal cultivators realized that for Geo's hair to remain undamaged while his face was burned away meant that his black hair with the unnatural spiked clumps was even more modified than his face. There were only two reasons that Geo would have modified his hair to such a degree, and both made a large chunk of the audience sighed from sadness.

The first reason that Yoze and the crowd of immortal cultivators concluded was simply vanity. To have nice hair meant that one's appearance would be evaluated to the point where they could be considered good-looking.

Paired with Geo's strong body, handsome face, and smooth deep voice, Geo's hair made him extremely attractive to the human eye. But to be able to afford to spend so much crystal energy and still reach the peak of the Crystal Brain realm in a reasonable time meant that Geo's talent for immortal cultivation was excellent.

Many predicted that his immortal cultivation talent had to be at least on the Crystal rank, with a high possibility of his talent being classified in the Earth rank.

Only someone with such a high talent for immortal cultivation could afford to modify their physical body to the degree Geo had done to his body. To transform his original Blood Master realm body to be more powerful and durable than a Martial Grandmaster could only be achieved by spending a large amount of crystal energy.

To be capable of such a feat without the fear of dying from old age instantly depressed all the immortal cultivators whose talents had barely been ranked Pure. While they struggled and had to work hard every day for fear that they would die before becoming immortal, there were people like Geo who had so much talent that they could afford to waste it.

It made those immortal cultivators want to cry out about the unfairness of the world and wish that maybe one day when they finally reach immortality, they would crush those talented immortal cultivators they were forced to look up to.