Chapter 1413: The World Lost Color The clash between the two combatants took place on the eastern half of the arena, then the western half, then back and forth. They moved so rapidly that it looked as though they were blinking from place to place. Sword energy shook the heavens. A dragon howled; a phoenix shrieked. Holy dragons flew through the air, and heavenly fire exploded. The spectators watched the fight unfold with shock and awe.
The ninth Immortal King's body lit up with heavenly fire, silver-white over a blood-red core. Thunder rumbled through the air as the outline of a phoenix manifested behind him. He penetrated space as he charged forward.
"[Holy Dragon Sword: Bleaching the World]!"
Li Feng raised his sword high overhead, glinting brightly.
Heaven and earth suddenly lost color as the surroundings turned dim and dark, as though all that light had been snatched away. Li Feng and the area around him began to glow more brightly than the sub. The light grew more intense as the aura of the technique increased in strength.
He struck, and the world lost color. White light saturated the world; everything was dyed white. The spectators' sight turned solid white.
The ninth Immortal King was forced back in a spray of silver feathers. His Divine Embrace broke, and silver shards filled the air. He coughed out blood and stumbled away.
"[Dream of Light and Shadow]!"
As Li Feng struck, a rainbow arc accompanied his slash, as though an aurora were visible in the sky. It shone in all the colors of the rainbow, momentarily hypnotizing anyone who looked at it.
The spectators found themselves dazed in the aftermath of the attack, while the ninth Immortal King was stunned for long moments, lost in the dazzling gleam of the sword technique.
Li Feng's body suddenly split into tens of thousands of copies, each with a dazzling gaze of rainbow light. The rosy-hued light was captivating and transported those who saw it into a realm of illusion, making it impossible to distinguish which of the copies were real and which were fake.
Pearls of silver blood splashed onto the ground. The ninth Immortal King, his body scarred and wounded, regained consciousness at the last moment and attempted to block with his halberd. However, Li Feng moved too quickly. Under his holy dragon transformation, his speed was nearing even the speed of light. Manifold illusions arrayed themselves around him, as though they were in a dream.
The sword slash cut through the Immortal King's internal organs and bones. Any other cultivator would have perished, but the ninth Immortal King's constitution was incredible.
The ninth Immortal King transformed into a phoenix, one burning with three colors of flame: blood-red, gold, and silver. Fire blazed through the air as the phoenix's wings unfurled in an explosion of color. This was the true form of the ninth Immortal King.
Zhang Lie frowned. "He was a phoenix all along?"
A nearby spectator replied, "A phoenix bearing three heavenly flames, at that."
The ninth Immortal King bore a phoenix's bloodline, allowing him to rise from the ashes even after a devastating blow. The damage he had incurred had vanished. Flames in red, gold, and silver swept through the arena.
"[Holy Dragon Sword: Light and Darkness]!"
Circles of light revolved around Li Feng in a feat of manipulation, condensing light to such an extent that it took on near-physical form.
As though he had broken through some sort of limit, a transformation occurred.
This technique was born of inspiration from the genetic transmutation that Zhang Lie had once displayed. Genetic energy was a form of energy that was attuned to the elements by one's life and soul itself. No hunter could change their elemental attunement, but the properties of their genetic energy was malleable. Water-attuned genetic energy could take on the ductile properties of gold and the solidity and order of crystal, the density of mud, or even the high temperature of steam.
Water was a malleable element that could take on the properties of its associated counterparts, not as an intrinsic property, but as a skill that Zhang Lie had developed and utilized.
Light-attuned genetic energy couldn't transform into gold or crystal, or even mud or steam, but it was likewise able to accomplish transformations that water-attuned genetic energy couldn't.
The opposite of light was darkness; where light exists, so too must shadow. Darkness was the closest element to light.
Li Feng flared brightly, transforming into a radiant sun. The light began to revolve and strobe, forming a circle of light. Individual photons were accelerated and sent crashing into one another.
This sort of high-energy radiation could easily destroy a star. The pulse of light was supercharged beyond its limits.
A black core appeared where the light bombarded itself, spreading rapidly and transforming into a black hole. A tremendous suction formed around Li Feng's hands.
The birth of a black hole inverted the flow of light-attuned genetic energy. As Li Feng manipulated it, it suddenly grew wider and began giving off dark matter.
Even Zhang Lie and the others were stunned by Li Feng's new technique, which revealed a type of energy visceral and physical in origin, far more so than the far-flung notions of karma and fate.
It had been calculated that, of all the energy that existed in the universe, 26.8% was in the form of dark matter, 4.9% in the form of ordinary matter, and the other 68.3% expended in the expansion of the universe. It could well be said that the universe was formed of dark matter, and it was much like the water and mud of Earth.
This sort of energy was invisible and colorless, unreactive to light and electromagnetic radiation. It was neither black nor white, and was simultaneously transparent and not.
In the past, humanity had only managed to observe such energy indirectly via studying the motion of celestial bodies.
Celestial bodies closer to the center of a galaxy revolved faster, forming the quintessential spiral patterns of nebulae. However, measurements conducted on the arcs traced out by celestial bodies far from the center of nebulae showed that they were moving at almost the same speed as celestial bodies close to the center, a much higher speed than anticipated.
This observation implied that there exists large quantities of invisible matter in the universe.
The distribution of matter in a galaxy can be computed from the diffuse velocity distributions of celestial bodies that comprise it.
Among these, dark matter could be divided into hot matter and cold matter.
Hot matter was present in residual quantities in the form of stable massive particles that interacted on the electroweak scale, with known residual abundance based on thermal decoupling. Neutral in terms of charge and color, it is unaffected by electromagnetism and the strong force.
One example of cold matter was a type of light neutral particle associated with the charge conjugation and parity breaking in the strong interaction. [1]
1. This author is not familiar with particle physics; don't trust what you read. ☜ Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ ɴ0velFɪre.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.