Chapter 73, Paragraph 5: Simulation (9)
Medusa's combat strength is still unclear. However, given her ability to severely injure Ling Yun from several miles away using her mental field, it's likely that even with his eyes open and using his full strength, Ling Yun wouldn't be a match for her. Let alone with his eyes closed.
Panoramic scanning views are unusable, and neither is the naked eye. The only thing that can be used is intangible and formless perception. As long as it's not precise enough to become a light-sensitive image, Medusa's earth-shattering petrification spell will be ineffective.
The copying ability was still intensely analyzing the petrification technique's data. This was a strange technique Ling Yun had never seen before, capable of turning flesh and blood into cold stone. This technique violated all the laws of physics and chemistry that Ling Yun knew. Moreover, within the fourth layer of the barrier, besides practicing strange techniques, Ling Yun had witnessed most of the strange techniques possessed by other ability users in the world. Although there were even stranger and more powerful strange techniques, none were as bizarre and terrifying as petrification.
Fortunately, the mental field can break all supernatural spells. As long as the petrification does not extend beyond the chest, the person can return to normal. This can be understood as the process of casting a spell being able to be reversed, but once the spell is completed, the result is irreversible.
Medusa's enormous serpentine body slithered across the plaza, her dark, iron-like tail lashing out with lightning speed, shattering some of the nearby stone sculptures within the stone forest. Suddenly, she snapped her tail back, creating a deep crater in the hard granite ground. Her three-meter-tall body shot into the air with a whoosh, flying towards Ling Yun.
Ling Yun used his senses to look in the direction Medusa had flown from, and suddenly a thought struck him. It seemed that a strange energy was spreading outwards from the stone forest.
A transparent light barrier appeared in the air, intercepting Medusa's flight path. Medusa crashed violently into the barrier, producing a deafening roar that shook the earth. With such immense force, even a skyscraper would likely have collapsed upon impact.
However, the light shield, formed of some unknown material, was incredibly sturdy. No matter how Medusa rammed into it, the shield remained unmoved. Medusa, having exhausted her strength in the air, had no choice but to bounce back onto the plaza, letting out a strange hissing sound in frustration.
Medusa cannot leave Stone Forest Square; the light barrier serves to impede her. Ling Yun immediately understood, and his unease subsided. If Medusa could move freely, even without her petrification ability, Ling Yun would be no match for her based solely on his own strength. Compared to Medusa, a humanoid creature is nothing more than a fragile alien weapon.
To reach the target castle, he needed to traverse the stone forest. Medusa could wait patiently, but Ling Yun didn't have that time; the countdown constantly reminded him that time was running out. The numbers on the clock were already below one thousand. The remaining nine hundred or so were counting down at an even faster pace.
Medusa once again lunged at Ling Yun from afar, but the distance was considerable. His senses had already detected the force approaching from a distance, and Ling Yun swiftly dodged to the side. With a deafening roar, a massive, incredibly sharp claw print appeared on the ground where he had just stood.
Medusa launched a series of attacks on Ling Yun from a distance, as if she had gone mad. Although Ling Yun dodged them all, the increasingly frequent evasions and the fact that he was being attacked without retaliating made him frown deeply.
What should he do? While dodging, Ling Yun racked his brains for a way to deal with Medusa, when suddenly a brilliant idea flashed in his mind.
Suddenly, after Medusa launched another attack from a distance, Ling Yun dodged to the side and his figure vanished into thin air.
Medusa was taken aback, then a cold smile appeared on her beautiful face. Invisibility was practically useless against Medusa. Her eyes could not only petrify her opponents, but also see through all invisible things; otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to break through Ling Yun's telekinetic blade attack so easily in the first place.
Sure enough, in the blood-red glow of the surroundings, a faint silver figure was rushing rapidly toward the stone forest, seemingly trying to use invisibility to quickly pass through it.
Medusa remained impassive, but suddenly the scales covering her upper body emitted a dark blue light. The blue light flashed across her body, gradually gathering in her palms along her arms. As the blue light grew stronger, dazzling electric sparks flickered within it.
After accumulating enough power, Medusa raised a long arm, aimed the blue orb at the fast-moving figure, and a blinding bolt of lightning shot out, striking the figure almost instantly and emitting a bright and brilliant light.
After the light faded, the silver figure was gone.
But Medusa was stunned; she suddenly lost contact with Ling Yun. Her incredibly sharp eyes told her unmistakably that although the lightning had struck Ling Yun, it was merely an illusion. The faint silver figure was just a figment of Ling Yun's imagination.
This was something Medusa had never seen before. Her lack of understanding of the unknown left her bewildered. Even as Ling Yun became invisible, her gaze never left his concealed figure. The body could be effectively made invisible, but energy and aura couldn't be hidden along with it. Perhaps such a being existed, but it would undoubtedly be far stronger than Medusa. Clearly, Ling Yun was not such a powerful being.
However, the silver figure was clearly Ling Yun's invisible form, so why did it suddenly become a virtual image? Medusa is not human; her long-standing habit of solving problems with violence has severely degraded her already somewhat intellectually challenged brain. The consequence of her agitated nature is that countless bolts of lightning flash near the Stone Forest Square. Medusa has completely lost her temper, and the consequences are severe.
Lingyun seemed to have vanished, and the air was quiet, with nothing else in sight.
Suddenly, Medusa stopped releasing the lightning. Her body froze in mid-air, her hands still in a strange attack stance. Slowly, she retreated rapidly.
One after another, nearly transparent silver threads appeared less than centimeters away from her. If Medusa had moved even slightly, she would have been cut to pieces. But her almost instinctive intuition told her the danger, and she dodged the dangerous threads at the last second.
Medusa's next move was to grab at a spot in the air, and a figure was thrown out of the void in a disheveled state—it was Ling Yun. After launching the most likely successful sneak attack at the risk of being discovered, the assassination attempt still failed, even though it had come a hair's breadth from harming the powerful Medusa.
Medusa gripped Ling Yun's neck with her hand, the immense force making it difficult for him to breathe. His hands struggled futilely against the invisible hand at his throat. His face gradually turned bluish-purple, and his limbs grew weak and powerless—signs of impending suffocation.
Medusa smiled cruelly; she could easily crush this human, who was barely stronger than a grasshopper, even though he had caused her a lot of trouble.
How should she punish him? Medusa made her decision in a second. Of course, she would use petrification magic to turn him into a statue in the stone forest, so that she could see her creation every time she wanted to, and Medusa would feel a great sense of accomplishment.
A terrifying red light flashed again, and this time Ling Yun had no way to avoid it, not even by closing his eyes. This was because Medusa's telekinetic power was far greater than his.
A lifelike statue was created, the final, desperate struggle of Ling Yun appearing so realistic that it evoked a sense of overwhelming pressure. Even the world's greatest sculptors could not have created such an exquisite and artistic work.
Medusa gently put Lingyun down; even she couldn't bear to immediately break such a seemingly perfect creation.
But immediately, Medusa's face was filled with astonishment.
Chapter 74, Paragraph 5: Simulation (10)
The statue of Lingyun suddenly moved, raising its heavy right leg as if testing the waters, before immediately returning to normal gait. It slowly walked towards Medusa.
If Medusa hadn't lacked eyelids, she would have rubbed her eyes to see if she was seeing things. A statue moving? In Medusa's short memory, such a thing had never happened before. Petrification meant the loss of life force; becoming a statue meant utter death.
The fact that the statue could move was far beyond Medusa's comprehension.
An unprecedented fear rose from the depths of Medusa's heart. The stone sculpture, like a puppet, continued to walk, a mocking smile appearing on its face. If it weren't for its entirely stone-colored surface, it would have been almost indistinguishable from a real person.
Medusa roared to the sky, and suddenly azure lightning shot out from her palm, shattering the stone sculpture into pieces.
Medusa was relieved. It seemed that even if Ling Yun's stone sculpture could move, it didn't possess strong offensive or defensive capabilities. Before her overwhelming power, it was still utterly vulnerable.
To her utter astonishment, the stone sculpture fragments lay silently in the plaza for a moment. Suddenly, they began to move strangely again. Each fragment, of varying sizes, began to deform, and then quickly transformed back into the shape the stone sculpture had before it was shattered. Hundreds of lifelike Lingyun stone sculptures, large and small, marched in unison, silently approaching Medusa.
Medusa's massive body retreated rapidly, her mind a complete mess. She stretched out her palms, and countless bolts of lightning danced across the plaza. Not only the terrifying, towering statues before her, but also a large portion of the surrounding stone forest collapsed. Half the plaza's ground level dropped a full half meter, and billowing dust filled the air like a desert storm.
After a long while, the smoke and dust finally drifted down slowly, and the Stone Forest Square became clear again. Medusa stared blankly with her blood-red eyes, looking around at the empty square. Lingyun's stone sculpture had been completely reduced to the finest dust, and there should be no possibility of it deforming again.
A strange silver thread slowly emerged in the air, silently wrapping around Medusa's neck, which was covered in incredibly hard scales. Medusa, who was already on the verge of losing her mind due to the eerie statue, finally realized the danger. The lightning in her hand had just lit up when the silver thread gently wrapped around her, and the head of the snake-haired banshee was cleanly severed from Medusa's body.
The headless body, having lost its head, stood stiffly for a long time before crashing to the ground with a loud thud, kicking up clouds of dust.
A transparent ripple spread through the air, gradually expanding, and a figure slowly stepped out from the ripple—it was Ling Yun.
Medusa's head had barely fallen when it was frozen in mid-air by telekinesis. Medusa wasn't dead yet, but she had lost all vitality, lying languidly together; all her life force came from Medusa. Once Medusa died, Medusa would quickly weaken and die.
After escaping the mirror world, Ling Yun mastered the Mirror Image Technique. This technique, like others, lacks any offensive or defensive capabilities, seemingly remaining a useless skill. However, the wonder of the Mirror Image Technique lies in the fact that, as long as the opponent remains unaware, Ling Yun can step into the mirror at any time and project his image from the mirror world onto the real world. This projection can also be called a mirror image, so even when subjected to Medusa's petrification spell, the mirror image can still move freely. Then, taking advantage of the panic Medusa experiences, he can launch a surprise attack and kill her.
Of course, the Mirror Technique isn't flawless. If an opponent discovers the world within the mirror, a strong, high-frequency vibration of their mental energy field would be enough to force Ling Yun out. However, Medusa never noticed Ling Yun's weakness. If it were a human like Medusa, they might very well have discovered it.