DD Black White [363-364]

Chapter 363: Lu Jingming vs. Sea God Tang San

Feeling the opponent's suddenly soaring, ocean-crushing divine pressure, Lu Jingming showed no fear. His battle intent only burned hotter.

Eightfold Thunder Interdict—he had only revealed five. The true killing moves were still to come.

Driven back by Lu Jingming's whip once, Tang San's already-cold face sank completely. The majesty and wrath belonging to a God King erupted.

The phantom of the Seagod Trident in his hand burst into unprecedented, dazzling divine light. The trident's body hummed, as if every sea on the Douluo star resonated with it, roaring thunderously.

"An ant dares profane divine might!"

Tang San's voice was icy and pitiless, carrying the weight of judgment.

"Let body and spirit be annihilated as the price, to remember that a God King cannot be insulted."

"Golden Thirteen Strikes!"

He stopped holding back and unleashed the Seagod's signature divine technique.

Though this was only a strand of divine sense, unable to exhibit his true God King-level strength, driven by the will of a God King its power was still enough to shake the cosmos.

"Unfettered Storm!"

The trident traced a profound trajectory. Rings of gold-blue light rippled outward like endless tides, instantly enveloping Lu Jingming.

This strike was not a direct assault but contained control—binding gods and locking souls, calming the storm and plunging the opponent into absolute restraint.

Lu Jingming felt the space around him congeal. The surging thunder seemed to grow sluggish, his movements abruptly slowing.

"Black Abyss—Wither!"

Without hesitation, Lu Jingming thrust the Black Abyss spear in his left hand. The pinpoint of ultimate black on the spear tip swelled, becoming a rotating micro black hole, ravenously devouring and breaking down the gold-blue rings of confinement.

The power of decay and death clashed violently with the Seagod's control, producing a tooth-aching, rending screech.

"A Thousand Years, Empty and Vast!"

In that instant, Tang San's second strike arrived.

The trident became ten thousand golden afterimages, as if traversing millennia, stabbing at Lu Jingming from every angle, the unreal and the real interwoven—inescapable.

"White Flower—Bloom!"

Lu Jingming's right-hand White Flower spear danced. Holy yet incisive spear-light bloomed like a world-cleansing lotus. Countless pure white petals imbued with the light of life whirled out, meeting every golden trident shadow with pinpoint accuracy.

The dense clanging collisions were like a torrential downpour. Each clash unleashed terrifying energy ripples.

"No Return!"

Tang San's eyes flashed cold. He seized the instant of Lu Jingming's guard and thrust a strike condensed to ultimate penetration.

Golden light gathered to a point, as if piercing time and space, ignoring all defense, targeting Lu Jingming's brow.

Thunder vortices spun in Lu Jingming's pupils. He neither dodged nor flinched. Holding Black Abyss and White Flower in a cross before him, black-red thunder and white-gold lightning interwove in an unprecedented fusion, becoming a spiral thunder-spear that met the "No Return" tip head-on.

Boom—!!

Extreme radiance erupted, swallowing all sound and sight. The terror of the blast spread outward like a planet exploding.

The next instant, both figures moved at once—

One gold-blue, one black-red, two lances of light tearing the sky, slamming into each other.

Trident against spear, divine skills unfurled.

From the ruins over eastern Mingdu all the way to the former city center in the south, they fought in a running battle.

Where they passed, space shattered like broken glass, collapsing, mending, and collapsing again.

Below, the ground was plowed by an invisible giant plow. Everything—ruins, metal, even the drifting energy particles—was reduced to the finest dust by the terrifying spillover of their exchange, utterly obliterated.

The world seemed to lose all color, leaving only pure black and white, gold-blue and black-red.

Only those two lights—embodying different divine seats and different wills—collided, crossed, parted, and collided again.

Each clash was like stars colliding, bursting with destructive brilliance.

Their duel also drew the attention of other Servants and powerhouses in battle.

In the high sky, sensing the collision of two divine auras, Feixiao paused; Celenova also cast her gaze downward. The four demigods were grievously wounded; if not for Celenova, they would have died beneath Feixiao's spear by now.

Jing Yuan, Cerydra, Hysilens, Aglaea, Jeanne, and Hoolay all hesitated for a heartbeat, then their assaults grew even fiercer.

Within the imperial palace, the fighting intensified further.

Xiao Wu, goaded by some inexplicable stimulus, grew somewhat manic; Artoria and Cu Chulainn were in dire peril.

Across all of Mingdu, the battle became ever more intense due to Tang San and Lu Jingming's fight. Everyone went all out in an instant, eager to finish their own opponents quickly.

In a blink, Lu Jingming and Seagod Tang San had exchanged over a thousand moves. The clash of divine power and the duel of laws had reached a white heat.

By virtue of his formidable divine body in Divineform, the terrifying energy endurance provided by his dual soul cores, and the properties of Black Abyss and White Flower, Lu Jingming forced a stalemate against Tang San's strand-of-divine-sense.

But he knew his Divineform's time was near its limit. His body's burden was at the breaking point, his soul wracked by tearing pain.

A fierce light flashed in Lu Jingming's eyes. He ignored everything, taking Tang San's elusive, thousand-ton killing move "White Cloud of a Thousand Years" with the Divineform-tempered shoulder armor.

A piercing impact and the fine crack of bone sounded. His throat sweetened; he forced down the surging blood and used the massive force to fling himself backward.

At the same time, his hands formed a complex seal before his chest, inciting the lightning of the heavens to riot.

"Eightfold Thunder Interdict, Sixth—Summon the Thunder Emperor!"

His shout was like thunder from the ninth heaven. Words became law.

Behind him, the gigantic, slowly rotating black-red thunder halo gave a sky-rending hum, detached, and hung overhead.

Countless black-red bolts of annihilating divine thunder poured forth like vassals paying homage to their emperor—from rifts in the void, from his pores, from the scorched earth below for ten thousand li—converging into the halo like rivers to the sea.

The halo swelled and deformed at a speed visible to the naked eye, in an instant becoming a dark sun over a hundred meter in diameter, made purely of annihilating thunder.

On its corona, billions of profound, ferocious thunder sigils flickered in and out, radiating a fearsome pressure that twisted the space-structure of the Douluo plane, nearly shattering it.

A heavenly might swept the world—the authority to govern the birth and death of ten thousand thunders, to judge all beings' sins.

Then a colossal pillar of black thunder, thick enough to blot out the sun and pure enough to devour all, descended like the last judgment of heaven's wrath, bearing absolute will to annihilate all things.

Where the pillar passed, space was not torn but returned directly to chaotic nothingness, locked onto the Seagod Tang San below.

For the first time, Tang San's expression grew grave. The trident phantom burst with azure light bright enough to pierce mountains and rivers, as if compressing the whole boundless sea into a point.

"Sun of the Sea!"

He roared, thrusting the trident.

A similarly massive, azure energy sun formed of endless heavy water and the Seagod's purest divine power surged to meet it. Its light was gentle, but it contained supreme might.

Rumble—!!!

The black thunder pillar and the azure sea-sun collided high in the sky.

There was no instant explosion—only extreme energy annihilation and a struggle of laws.

Black and blue energies entwined, corroded, and cancelled each other wildly, erupting with a roar that dimmed sun and moon. Each wisp of straying energy could instantly kill a Title Douluo.

"Seventh—Heaven's Funeral of Ten Thousand Thunders!"

Lu Jingming didn't wait for the outcome. He slammed both hands down on the void below. His face paled further, but his battle will burned like a star.

In an instant, centered on the collision point, the entire sky within sight was packed with billions of twisted, roaring, ferocious black-red thunder-dragons.

They seemed like doomsday beasts escaped from a thunder hell. Each was thick as a mountain ridge, its body flickering with the runes of the first six thunders.

Like a terminal storm, they poured down indiscriminately upon Tang San, smashing and self-detonating, instantly forging an absolute, god-burning, soul-extinguishing inferno of thunder, drowning Tang San and his Seagod domain.

The dragons' roars and explosions merged into a symphony of destruction, trying to drag the world into thunder's end-times.

Tang San's vast sea domain was compressed to the limit. The Golden Thirteen Strikes formed an absolute defense, countless golden trident shadows shredding the charging thunder-dragons.

But the dragons were endless, madly consuming his divine power and divine sense. His defensive ring quaked violently, shrinking bit by bit.

"Eighth—The End—Ten Thousand Thunders to Silence!"

Lu Jingming spat a mouthful of resplendent blood made entirely of divine power and thunder. Once freed, the divine blood became myriad eldritch blood-lightnings that curled back and enveloped him fully.

In that instant, Lu Jingming became thunder, and thunder became him—man and lightning as one, a supreme state.

He seemed like the first filament of lightning at the dawn of time—and also the final abode at the end of all things.

All sounds ceased. All radiance withdrew.

Only absolute, terminal stillness of annihilation spread from him, quietly yet irresistibly.

The roaring doomsday thunder-dragons, the black thunder pillar against the sea-sun, even Tang San's boundless Seagod domain—all, upon touching that terminal annihilation, were simply erased, soundlessly dissolving, breaking down, returning to nothing.

As if they had never existed.

"What?!"

Tang San's face finally changed drastically, horror appearing in his eyes.

He clearly felt even his divine power—and the very source of his divine sense—being dissolved and erased by that overbearing end-force.

He drove divine power and sense frantically to resist, but the terminal force's priority was terrifyingly high, and he was, after all, only a strand.

At the instant when his defenses were thinnest and his power briefly fell into silence—

Ssst!

A hair-fine black-red bolt, condensed with the power of the end, like a godslaying thorn born from the void, slipped through a defensive gap and pierced Tang San's left shoulder.

"Urgh!"

Tang San's figure convulsed. His left shoulder, formed of divine power, turned translucent and nearly collapsed. It didn't shatter fully, but his divine body was truly wounded.

The Seagod Tang San—wounded in the divine body by a mere mortal.

"You—!"

A tidal wave of rage exploded in Tang San's heart, instantly pushing back the corrosion of the end-force—an unforgivable humiliation.

Far off, Tang Wutong, sheltered by divine power, stood dumbfounded, her pink-blue eyes full of shock and confusion. She stared at the figure emerging from the lightning—pale-faced yet still proudly upright—as if to carve this moment into her soul forever.

It was her first time seeing anyone wound the father she believed invincible.

The Seagod's fury became a terrifying pressure that swept heaven and earth, like the roar of the entire ocean, crashing down.

Tang San's wrath erupted like an ancient submarine volcano, becoming palpable coercion that engulfed everything.

Countless massive sea pillars, each over a hundred meters thick, erupted without warning from the shattered earth, carrying torrential waves and destructive divine power, turning the already-ruined southern Mingdu into a surging sea of divine punishment.

Gales howled, rain poured like cataracts. The very sky was forcibly rewritten—clouds pressed low, electric serpents writhed—but even they seemed to tremble before the Seagod's wrath.

This was the majesty of a God King. Even a single strand of divine sense could seize the laws of a region, far beyond ordinary deities' reach.

Upon the boundless waters, an even more terrifying sight appeared—countless sky-piercing waterspouts drank the sea and, guided by divine power, merged into a towering colossus thousands of meters tall, its upper body buried in the clouds: the Seagod Giant.

Its form, forged of the deep sea's power and radiant divinity, had a blurred face yet an ancient, suffocating presence. Each breath called hurricanes and tsunamis. Its vast shadow nearly covered the entirety of Mingdu's ruins.

"Ant—you have chosen death!"

The icy divine snarl rolled like a billion thunders within the clouds. Its shockwaves swept thousands of kilometers. Even commoners hundreds of km away saw the colossal silhouette standing between heaven and earth and shivered under apocalyptic dread.

"The last strike!"

Gazing at the sky-blotting giant, Lu Jingming's expression tightened. Feeling the pain in his body and the pressure on his mind, he knew his Divineform was about to end, and he had only barely wounded Tang San's strand.

Even so, it was astounding—this was a God King's strand, and lodged within Tang Wutong no less, with power comparable to a full second-rank god's body.

If not for planar suppression, as a newly-minted Title Douluo merely borrowing a divine seat and true lightning to briefly assume Divineform, Lu Jingming might not have hurt Tang San at all.

Such a feat would shine through the ages.

History would record: Lu Jingming, the Doomsday Douluo, made a god bleed as a mortal—his name immortal.

"Xiao Ming, stop. Your spiritual sea is nearly dry. Your flesh is at the brink of collapse."

Makoto's anxious voice sounded in his mind.

Were it not for White Flower's vast creative force and the Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's Dendro Authority constantly repairing him, he would have disintegrated in the earlier exchanges.

But spiritual overdraft cannot be instantly mended. A mortal soul forcibly bearing a god's throne—ultimately too much.

Chapter 364: Jingliu Makes Her Move

If Lu Jingming could condense a third soul core, step into demi-godhood, and form divine sense, he could sustain Divineform.

In other words, once he reached level 99 with Divineform, he could fight a second-rank god at full power.

And once he ascended, with the foundation of dual God King thrones, even newly ascended he would far surpass first-rank gods, brushing the threshold of God King might.

Lu Jingming's gaze burned brighter.

Facing the Seagod Giant's world-ending punch, bearing the weight of the ocean itself, he felt unprecedented mortal danger—yet an even fiercer will to fight.

Divineform had reached its limit. His body and soul screamed under the load, but he had to unleash this final blow.

"In that case—let our Seagod Lord witness the pinnacle of technique!"

With a low growl, he brought both hands together before his chest. Black Abyss and White Flower turned into two ultimate bolts—one black, one white—and poured into his body.

At once, the black-white lightning merged within him and was forcibly kneaded and compressed.

In his left hand: the thunder of Black Abyss—ultimate ruin and death, inky black, devouring all life, like the end of all things.

In his right: the thunder of White Flower—ultimate creation and life, holy and radiant, brimming with boundless vitality, like the first note of creation.

These two polar, mutually repellent powers, under the command of the Eternal and Thunder divine seats and the reins of Lu Jingming's will, began to entwine and fuse in an extremely dangerous way.

"Heaven's Interdict—Earth's Desolation—Eight Thunders Converge—Godslaying Thunder!"

He intoned the true name of the Eightfold Thunder Interdict's final style.

The power imprints of the previous eight thunders he had used were all invoked.

Eight disparate thunder truths and vast energies surged from all directions into the rapidly spinning, hyper-unstable chaos-sphere of lightning before his chest.

Rumble—!!!

Heaven and earth lost their color.

The world seemed muted—light, sound, even energy were ravenously swallowed by the fist-sized chaos thunderball.

On its surface black and white serpents of lightning raced and hissed, swelling like a star and shrinking like a seed, containing a paradoxical, terrifying end-force that could return all to the void, yet also birth all anew.

For a heartbeat, even the plane's repulsive force seemed cowed by this transgressive power, growing sluggish.

High above, Feixiao and Celenova simultaneously broke off, staring down in shock.

Jing Yuan drove back Hysilens with a stroke, frowning; Cerydra, Aglaea, and the rest felt a powerful sense of crisis.

"Impossible!"

From the thunderball, Tang San, controlling the giant, sensed a power that could truly threaten the existence of his strand.

He hesitated no longer. The giant's fist—condensed from the ocean's total weight and a God King's wrath—smashed down like a collapsing world-tree, crushing layer upon layer of space toward Lu Jingming.

"Go!"

Blood-lightning seeped from all seven of Lu Jingming's orifices. He poured his last strength and burning will into the sphere and shoved it forward.

The sphere shot out soundlessly—seemingly slow, yet crossing space instantly.

It met the annihilating giant fist midair.

There was no expected heavens-rending blast.

Time froze—

And then—

Light and dark erupted to the extreme.

Black and white thunder radiance exploded like a cosmic big bang—and like the final heat-death of all things—silently devouring the Seagod Giant's fist, then surging along its arm and torso…

That colossal giant of water and divinity, before this thunder-law fusing the ultimate principles of decay and creation, melted like ice beneath a scorching sun—dissolving from the impact point, breaking down into primal particles, returning to utter nothing.

The black-white thunder surged unstoppably, swallowing the enormous giant and then hurtling straight toward Tang San's strand.

"What?!"

Tang San's pupils shrank. He threw his full power behind the Seagod Trident's phantom to block.

Boom—!!!

This time, the detonation was deafening.

Gold-blue Seagod power and black-white terminal thunder annihilated one another in a frenzy.

Tang San's strand shuddered violently. The divine light around him dimmed to the limit. He grunted as he was hurled backward, the wound on his already-phantasmal left shoulder bleeding divine power even faster.

He was driven back again—far more wretched than before.

But as soon as Lu Jingming unleashed that earth-shaking blow with his last ounce of strength, the mighty divine aura around him ebbed like the tide.

The black-red thunder halo collapsed and vanished. The resplendent armor faded. His hair returned to ashen white. His body swayed and plummeted from the sky like a cut kite.

Divineform time had run out. Extreme weakness and soul-rending pain swallowed him.

"This ends now!"

Tang San, though reeling, forced himself steady. He was badly wounded and had spent much power, but the killing intent in his eyes condensed to substance.

He would not allow such a variable to remain.

He gathered what divine power he had left. The Seagod Trident rose, and a condensed gold-blue beam of destruction, enough to slay a true god, formed to execute the falling Lu Jingming.

But in that split second—

A voice, cold as ten thousand years of ice, yet honed to an absolute edge, sounded clearly in Tang San's ear, as if from the depths of the Nine Hells.

"My disciple is not yours to touch."

Before the words faded, a pale sword light—one that seemed to sever causality and freeze time—suddenly hung between Tang San and Lu Jingming.

The gold-blue beam housing Tang San's killing intent struck that slender pale light and shattered like brittle glass into motes of light, doing nothing.

At the same moment, a figure appeared soundlessly beneath Lu Jingming, catching his falling body—gentle but unshakable.

Her silver-white hair fell like a waterfall of ice. She radiated an aloof, wintry solitude, as if she existed outside the world's rules.

The longsword in her hand, as if carved from eternal ice, emanated a killing edge so cold even a God King's divine sense would ache, a chill that seemed to freeze thought itself.

Jingliu slowly raised her head. Her eyes—no longer concealed, blood-red as if aflame—were like two burning cold stars, piercing the void to fix upon the distant, aghast Seagod Tang San.

That gaze was cold, pure, without a trace of impurity—only the most absolute sword intent and killing will.

"Your opponent is me now."

Her voice was calm and indisputable.

Tang San's strand stiffened completely, feeling the sword intent in that pale light, and the unfathomable, mortal-danger aura from this white-haired woman—terror supplanted his anger.

Where did these people come from? What has happened to the Douluo plane?!

Lu Jingming's face was white as paper. His body wavered, as if a breeze could topple him, but he steadied himself and stood.

Though racked by pain and weakness, the corner of his mouth lifted despite himself. Bright amusement flickered in his eyes.

That full-force battle with Tang San's strand, brief but priceless, had let him truly experience the operation of divine power, the resonance and struggle of laws. That high vantage—grasping authority—overturned his understanding of his own system.

The experience surpassed any cultivation or manual—an inestimable treasure.

He knew that with his current foundation, forcing Divineform was dancing on a blade. When time ran out, he would fall from the clouds, a lamb to the slaughter.

But he had chosen to fight anyway.

His confidence came from the unshakable backing behind him—Jingliu, The Herta… He knew that even if he were helpless, they would never let him be harmed.

And his gamble paid beyond expectations.

This lofty experience cleared all fog from his road to godhood.

Accumulating soul power would not be hard: searching for heavenly treasures, drawing planar feedback—even asking The Herta to blast open a black hole again to extract chaos—shortcuts abounded.

The real hurdle was insight into laws and condensing soul cores, especially forging the third core—a matter of deep comprehension and opportunity.

Now, having personally wielded divine power, the third soul core's secrets lay bare before him.

The road ahead was clear. With patient accumulation, the third core would form naturally.

Beyond Limit Douluo, soul power is no longer key. Insight into laws, tempering of spirit, and even the gathering of faith are the core steps toward the throne.

"Teacher, I'm fine."

Lu Jingming's voice was hoarse, but suffused with trust and ease.

"I'll leave him to you. Send this strand… into oblivion."

Even with White Flower's creative force and Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's life authority as his safety net—his body rebuildable even from collapse—the overdraft needed time to recover.

As the space around him subtly warped, he vanished without a trace.

Staying would only distract Jingliu.

Without Divineform, even the faintest splash from two such powers crossing could maim or kill him.

At the center of the battlefield, sensing Lu Jingming's safe departure, the last ripple in Jingliu's blood-red eyes stilled—leaving only pure, absolute cold and killing intent.

She was never one for many words.

She lifted her right hand. Index and middle finger came together as a sword-sign—casual in poise, yet bearing the will to cut all things.

In the next moment—

Vmm.

An intangible, soul-freezing sword intent speared into the heavens.

The sky's temperature plunged. Innumerable ice-crystal swords—condensed from ultimate sword intent and the law of frost—materialized. Densely packed, they blotted out the firmament in a breath.

Sunlight was severed. The world seemed to fall into an ice age.

These swords were not disorderly. They rotated and gathered along a mysterious pattern, becoming an enormous, slowly revolving wheel of icy blades in the heavens.

Along its rim, space was ceaselessly sliced, frozen, shattered—giving off a faint, tooth-aching sound.

Jingliu's figure appeared at the very center of that doomsday wheel. Her silver hair drifted silently within the killing chill.

She radiated an aura that kept all at a thousand li, those blood-red pupils looking down, locking coldly onto Tang San's strand below.

No words. No warning.

Only the hush before a storm of a billion blades, and a winter sword will that could freeze even gods.

She did not attack at once. The sun-blotting wheel revolved, a billion swordpoints fine-tuning—every one fixed on the sea-blue figure below.

Killing cold spread. The surging sea beneath began to freeze before the naked eye, even the leaping waves arrested mid-crest as if time itself had stopped.

Tang San's strand wore an unprecedentedly grave look.

From that wheel and the white-haired woman, he felt a threat purer and deadlier than Divineform Lu Jingming.

A cold that reached the root—freezing all things, even divine thought.

"Who are you?"

Tang San's eyes narrowed. He could see Jingliu bore no divine seat, yet her strength far exceeded common deities.

As he spoke, he secretly whipped his power to a frenzy. The Seagod Trident's phantom blazed, as he tried to drive out the cold invading his soul.

Jingliu ignored him.

In her eyes, this strand was merely a target to cut—no need for talk.

She raised her joined fingers slightly and drew a casual stroke toward him.

"Frosted Sky… Loom."

Her voice tinkled like ice beads on jade.

At once, tens of thousands of icy blades in the wheel thrummed in unison—eerie and precise.

They did not simply rain down. They became interlaced lines—exquisitely thin yet impossibly sharp filaments of frost-law and sword-intent—casting a net over the space where Tang San's strand stood.

These were no physical strings, but condensed manifestations of sword and frost. They sliced space, froze energy, ignoring physical defense to wind about Tang San's divine sense body.

Tang San roared, trident whirling. Gold-blue divine power surged like a tsunami, striking at the ice lines.

Yet on contact, the filaments did not shatter. They hissed, and the extreme cold raced back along his divine power, freezing and fixing it in place.

Even light, sound, and his flowing divine power grew sluggish.

This extreme cold seemed innately to restrain his sea power, leaving him at a harsh disadvantage.