pjbooks Chapter 66 Jiang Chen's Counterattack!
Chapter 66 Jiang Chen's Counterattack!
In the void, the deep purple thundercloud was still slowly rotating, but its light had dimmed considerably, like a shell whose soul had been ripped away. Astra hovered beneath the sea of clouds, his black robe intact, his silver hair flowing, and the maniacal smile on his lips still lingering.
But the chat room was completely exploding with comments.
"The Heaven-Burning Flame has been reversed??? The Nine Heavens Divine Thunder has also been reversed???"
"What kind of ability is that?! Reversing all attacks??? How are we supposed to fight like this?!"
"He's truly immortal... I just saw him completely blasted into dust, but he recovered in a second..."
"Is this the Thirteenth Apostle's true strength? When he fought Ye Wuhen and the others before, he didn't even use one-tenth of his power, did he?"
"Not one-tenth, not even one-hundredth. He just said it himself: in the past three hundred years, no one has been able to force him to use this state."
"Jiang Chen's attacks were terrifying enough; any one of those white flames and purple lightning could have instantly killed all the apostles from the previous levels. But against Astra, he was still reversed."
"Reversal...this ability is too overpowered..."
"Calm down, and look closely at Jiang Chen's expression."
The scrolling speed of the comments slowed down for a moment.
Everyone zoomed in on the screen, all staring at the boy in the school uniform. He hovered in mid-air, the dark golden ripples beneath his feet still slowly spreading, the hem of his school uniform fluttering gently in the invisible air currents. His right hand was in his pocket, his left hand hanging at his side, his posture as casual as if he were admiring the view from his own balcony.
But the corners of his mouth were turned up.
The curve was very faint, so faint that you wouldn't notice it unless you looked closely. But it was definitely a smile.
"He's laughing???"
"He's laughing at an enemy who's immortal and can reverse any attack???"
"You don't understand. That wasn't an ordinary laugh."
"What is that?"
"That's the smile of a hunter when he sees prey worth hunting."
"He's enjoying the fight."
The comments section fell silent for a few seconds.
Then came an even more violent outburst.
"He smiled!!! Jiang Chen smiled!!!"
"He had a completely blank expression the whole time we were fighting the thirteenth floor, but now he's smiling!!!"
"What does this mean? It means Astra has made him serious!!!"
"Previous opponents didn't even deserve his seriousness; Astra is the first!!!"
"So... all those crushing victories and instant kills weren't his true strength???"
"I have a feeling he's about to get serious."
In Jiang Chen's living room in Jiangzhou.
Jiang Xueqin didn't know what to do with her hands. First, she clutched the remote control, then it fell to the ground, but she didn't pick it up. Then she started pulling at the loose threads on the sofa fabric, one after another, leaving a small bald spot on the fabric. Her eyes never left the screen.
"He's laughing." Jiang Xueqin's voice trembled slightly. "Did Tianyi see him? He's laughing."
Jiang Tianyi sat next to her, his cigarette already finished, the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. He wanted to light another one, but his pockets were empty. He crumpled the empty pack and tossed it onto the coffee table, his eyes still glued to the screen.
"I saw it." His voice was hoarse. "When he was a kid, he always had this expression before exams."
Jiang Xueqin was stunned for a moment.
She remembered. From childhood to adulthood, before every important exam, while his classmates were nervously flipping through books, memorizing formulas, and asking each other questions, he would sit quietly in his seat, with a faint, almost imperceptible smile on his lips.
Once, the homeroom teacher asked her, "Jiang Chen's mother, why isn't your child nervous at all before the exam?"
When she got home, she asked Jiang Chen, and he said something that she remembered for many years.
"Nervousness stems from uncertainty about one's ability to succeed. I am confident, therefore I am not nervous."
At this moment, on the screen, the smile on Jiang Chen's lips was exactly the same as when he sat in the examination room back then.
"He's confident." Jiang Xueqin's tears finally fell, but this time they weren't tears of fear, but tears of excitement!
In the void, Jiang Chen stomped down.
There was no sound. But the entire void sensed it.
Centered on his feet, a ring of transparent ripples spread outwards in all directions. Wherever the ripples passed, the suspended fragments of space silently turned to dust, and the dark golden patterns twitched, dimmed, and extinguished like snakes whose blood vessels had been severed. The remnants of the purple thunderclouds were swept over by the ripples and evaporated into nothingness without even a chance to struggle.
Astra's pupils contracted sharply.
The dark red crack widened further in his golden eyeball.
"What did you do?" Astra's voice lost its usual languid calm for the first time.
Jiang Chen did not answer.
He simply stood there, his right foot still planted in the stomp position, the hem of his school uniform fluttering slightly in the invisible air currents. The smile on his lips was still there, even more pronounced than before.
Astra did not wait any longer.
His right arm charged up in a fraction of a second, his five fingers forming a blade, a dark golden light condensing at the edge of his palm into a thin, yet sharp, blade capable of slicing through space. His body vanished from its spot, appearing behind Jiang Chen in the next instant, his palm blade slashing horizontally towards the back of Jiang Chen's neck.
This attack was delivered without any reservation.
The palm strike cut through.
It cut through the air.
Jiang Chen's figure vanished the instant his palm strike touched him. Astra's pupils contracted again, his divine sense instantly filling the entire void, frantically searching for the figure in the school uniform.
found it.
Above his head.
Jiang Chen hung upside down in mid-air, head down, feet up, his right hand still in his school uniform pocket, his left hand hanging limply, his posture as casual as an upside-down bat. His face was less than three feet away from Astra's face, and his calm, watery eyes reflected Astra's shattered golden pupils.
Astra's second strike has arrived.
His left fist slammed out from below, a dark golden light condensing into a miniature black hole on the surface of his fist, devouring all the surrounding light. Wherever the fist's force passed, the void itself was torn open with a black crack, the edges of which were a scorching dark red, as if space itself was bleeding.
This punch is powerful enough to pierce through the stars.
Jiang Chen's figure disappeared again.
Astra's fist struck nothingness.
His divine sense searched frantically. Found him—twenty steps to his left. The instant his divine sense located him, his body turned, his right leg slashing down like a battle axe, his heel carrying enough power to shatter a continent, smashing towards Jiang Chen's head.
However, Jiang Chen's figure vanished instantly, then reappeared behind him with a meaningful smile.
"Not bad speed," he said, his tone as flat as if he were commenting on the cooking time of a dish, "but not enough."
He suddenly clenched his left hand.
Astra felt his heel being clamped by an iron clamp. His heel bone creaked under the pressure of the five fingers, and dark golden liquid seeped from his skin, dripping between Jiang Chen's fingers.
He looked down and saw that Jiang Chen's left hand fingers were embedded in his flesh.
Then, the world spun around.
Jiang Chen grabbed him by the heels and flung him away like a rag doll.