The Desolate Era

Book 16, Chapter 14 - Heartforce Manifests

“Hmph.” The violet-caped commander could sense the alien growing frantic; he could sense that this was, perhaps, the last throes of his enemy’s resistance. “It seems...he can no longer hold on.”

“Die!”

Ning suddenly let out an enraged roar.

He no longer held back at all on his divine power. Instead, he wildly poured it all into his arms at full force! The Void-level elemental ki in his body, through a secret art, was also immediately pushed into his arms. In this moment, Ning had only a single thought in his mind...no matter the cost, he was going to unleash his power to the maximum possible level.

Actually...even going all-out like this only resulted in a 30% increase in power.

“BREAK!”

Ning’s six arms struck out as six streaks of sword-light.

Ning’s calm eyes glowed with light, the light that came in the final instants of one’s life as it all blazed away. Ning’s heart and soul was completely poured into his swords.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Simultaneous explosions rang out.

Ning’s six sword-fingers stabbed out, four of them striking against the four silver whips. With explosive sounds, the silver whips...were actually knocked flying backwards. Ning’s fingers, however, continued to stab forward!

“What?!” The violet-caped commander’s eyes turned completely round. “How can this be?”

“Impossible!”

The many black-caped warriors watching from far away were amazed at this sight. They could all sense that Ning was inches away from death. Previously, he had been completely suppressed...so how was it that right now, at the very end, he was actually able to unleash power that surpassed the power of their commander, knocking his weapon away?

......

“What...how can this be?” Within the void-like region within the underwater estate, the giant yellow bear, who had been watching the battle outside this entire time, was completely surprised.

The giant yellow bear was most likely the person with the deepest understanding of Ning’s power.

He knew exactly what Ning was capable of. What Ning had displayed earlier represented his utmost limit of power; even if Ning went all out, he would at most be able to increase his power by 20% or 30%; he would still be considerably weaker than that violet-caped commander. How was it, then, that he had suddenly knocked the silver whip away?

“How can this be?”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“It...shouldn’t have happened.” The giant yellow bear couldn’t understand it. “This isn’t the Three Realms. There’s no way to sense the Dao here, so even if he suddenly gained a new insight into the Dao, it wouldn’t help him increase his power in any way. In addition, he is currently in a battle, and he’s used up an enormous amount of divine power. There’s no way he could’ve broken into the seventeenth level of the [Crimsonbright Diagram of the Nine Heavens] so soon...he just made it to the sixteenth level a short while ago.”

A breakthrough in his divine body? Impossible.

A breakthrough in the Dao? It wouldn’t make any difference.

The [Starseizing Hand] was already at the Fourth Cycle!

“How can this be?” The giant yellow bear didn’t understand.

......

Not too far away, inside the golden warship of the First Army which was ensconced within those countless warships. The commanders of the First Army were staring at the images within the levitating mirror.

“Eh?!”

“Odd.”

“What just happened? What ability did this alien just use?”

None of them understood it.

The golden-caped general, however, just laughed loudly. “Wonderful. The longer he can delay, the better; we’re almost there! Haha...it seems that in the end, it will still be us who captures this alien.”

......

The experts of the Snaphorn world couldn’t understand it. Not even the giant yellow bear understood it. Nobody could think of a reason why this had just happened.

But within the deep, dark reaches of the Void...

Three minds were communicating with each other.

“Second sister...what just happened?”

“Elder sister, what happened?”

The three Queen Mothers had given birth to many children; their children were the Firstborn! More than half of the commanders of the First Army were Firstborn; the three Queen Mothers could see and sense everything the Firstborn could see and sense! Thus, they too saw everything which had just happened.

The commander of the commando squad from the Third Void Sector, Benair, was the child of the second Queen Mother of the three Queen Mothers. When Benair fought with Ning, it was as though the second Queen Mother had personally fought against Ning.

“That was...”

“Heartforce?”

“Yes, heartforce! It was heartforce!” The second Queen Mother’s powerful mind suddenly began to tremble with excitement. “This human’s attack just now was actually filled with heartforce!”

“What? Heartforce?!”

“Heartforce?! He’s actually in control of heartforce?!”

The first and third Queen Mothers were both excited as well.

“Yes. There’s no mistaking it; in fact, just now I completely focused a strand of my mind upon my child Benair.” The second Queen Mother said excitedly, “They just clashed again. There’s no mistaking it; this human’s attacks contain heartforce within them. His control over his heartforce isn’t perfect; it’s clearly quite rough. However, I can still sense the powerful, mysterious, profound heartforce at work.”

“This is our chance!” The second Queen Mother was incomparably excited. “This human is able to focus his heartforce and knows how to apply it! That means he understands a heartforce technique! This is a truly supreme form of power; we can discover and distill the method for producing and applying heartforce from this human!”

“Right. Now we can gain a heartforce technique!”

“Yes, this is our chance!”

The other two Queen Mothers were incomparably excited as well.

They had experienced and survived that calamitous war; as survivors, they knew quite well that ‘heartforce’ was one of the truly supreme forms of power. Upon mastering heartforce, one could truly embark upon a path that would lead to them becoming the most supreme of existences within the primordial chaos! A path that led to surpassing even True Gods and Daofathers!

“This is our chance, but we cannot be rash.” The first Queen Mother’s mind warned the other two minds, “Heartforce techniques are supreme techniques that are absolutely not taught to outsiders, even within the Three Realms. This human youth must have an extraordinary background, which is why he was able to learn a technique like this. Perhaps there is a self-destruction mechanism hidden within his soul.”

“Actually...the simplest method is to hypnotize him, but he is one of those ‘Fiendgod Body Refiner’ humans; his soul and his body are completely merged together and extremely stable. In addition, he’s also a practitioner of heartforce; his mind must be very powerful. To hypnotize him...I imagine it will be quite difficult.”

“We have to try.”

Heartforce was far too alluring to them!

Heartforce...

It was an invisible, formless sort of power. It wasn’t like divine power, elemental ki, or natural energy; those could be seen with the naked eye. Heartforce, however, was incredibly powerful, and it was extremely hard to reach a basic level of skill in it. Back on Mount Innerheart, Ning had already been at a very high level of insight into the Dao, but he still had to train archery painstakingly for three years before finally reaching a basic level of skill.

However, heartforce truly was formidable. That mighty divinity of the Primordial Era, Houyi, had relied the power of his heartforce to become the number one divine archer of the Three Realms, and even Daofathers and True Gods had fallen to his hand.

Even Ning himself was surprised; his sword-finger had actually become so powerful as to suppress the whip of this violet-caped commander?

“Is this...heartforce?” Others might have to guess at it, but Ning himself knew very well that his incredibly berserk attack just now had been launched without any extraneous thoughts. All of his power had been fully merged into that blow...and his heartforce had unconsciously leaked into it as well.

How should heartforce be applied? This was a mystery.

The Three Realms had a set of extremely detailed instructions for applying heartforce through archery; this was the creation of the mighty divinity Houyi! It was precisely because mighty Houyi had systemized the method of using heartforce in archery that the Three Realms had so quickly developed a crop of terrifyingly powerful divine archers...but there were no systemized tools for teaching one how to apply heartforce into other weapons.

How to apply heartforce to the sword?

To the saber?

To the spear?

To the staff?

If heartforce was applied to these weapons, would they increase in power dramatically? Since it worked for archery, it logically should work for these weapons...but mighty Houyi was the foremost expert of heartforce within the Three Realms, and his greatest talent was archery. He had thus created a systemized method for applying it to archery...but as for other weapons? Perhaps some other major powers had discovered ways of applying heartforce to those weapons, but those ways were crude ways, not systemized ways which others could use.

“I actually managed to apply heartforce through my fingers when I used sword-arts?” Ning was completely amazed.

The power of an ordinary arrow was quite ordinary...but when heartforce was applied to it, it would instantly turn into a nightmare for foes! The power of the arrow would instantly rise to a terrifying level.

“However...just now, I was only able to truly apply a very tiny amount of heartforce.” Ning knew this for certain because he had used up only a very small amount of his heartforce; the rest of his heartforce remained untouched! As someone who had reached the third level of heartforce, ‘ruler’, Ning’s heartforce was tremendously powerful. Even just a tiny amount of it was enough to cause the power of his sword-arts to rise to a level where he could actually now suppress this foe.

“Alien, you actually still have more tricks up your sleeve? I want to see how powerful you actually are!” The violet-caped commander let out a loud shout, then lashed out with a whip once more. As for the mind of the second Queen Mother, it had completely descended onto the commander by now.

“Go.” Ning stretched out a single hand as well. His fingers flicked out!

His heartforce once more rode with his fingers, just as it had last time. Ning could sense that a small part of his heartforce had indeed become one with his fingers!

Bang! Ning’s fingers, now many hundreds of meters long, collided with that whip!

The whip was once more knocked flying back.

“Right. That’s the feeling.” Ning was beginning to vaguely make out the basics to it. However, he was still far, far away from being able to apply it as intricately as when he applied it to archery. All Ning could do was ponder the method of applying heartforce to archery, then try and come up with a similar way to strengthen his sword-fingers.

“Eh?” Ning suddenly realized that the distant, violet-caped commander had actually come to a halt.

Rumble...

A powerful ripple spread out. Ning took a look...and saw, far away in the void, one enormous spaceship after another coming flying towards him. There seemed to be no end to the densely clustered spaceships.

“...How many ships just arrived?” Ning was completely shocked.

The entrances to the ships all opened, and countless horned warriors came flooding out from them. Amongst these countless warriors were many black-caped warriors as well!

Ning swept them with his gaze. The number of ordinary horned warriors...they had to at least number in the millions. In addition, at the front of the many ships was a golden warship, from which one violet-caped warrior after another came flying out. At the very end, a gold-caped person came walking out, his aura so powerful and terrifying as to cause Ning to feel despair.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Suddenly, a series of thoughts descended upon the region.

The three Queen Mothers had sent out hundreds of thought-rays to the many violet-caped warriors, as well as the general.

“Don’t be in a hurry to attack.” The Queen Mother’s voice echoed within the general’s mind.

“Yes, Queen Mother,” the general replied mentally.

......

“Big bear, what’s going on outside? Can it be that the young master’s divine power hasn’t been used up yet? I think we should make our move now. Let’s not waste any time.” Within the underwater estate, the black-haired beauty, ‘Snow Scorpion’, spoke out.