Chapter 172 - 172 QI
172 QI
Layton was currently facing Carl, although in the past few weeks he had increased his combat power greatly and learnt from rip’s signature moves to ensure his combat power could rival that of normal immortals but he was still not fully confident in being able to come out on top facing Carl. It wasn’t the first time he had faced carl and in his current body he wasn’t sure of being able to emerge victorious in a life or death match, just the Immense amount of energy he possessed was a problem not to mention the ease with which it was manipulated and the peculiar nature and effect it had on substances and the environment.
Carl gazed at Layton with no fluctuation in his gaze, the emerald colour energy that was his qi spread out from him eating into the solid matter around turning the space around him into a swamp of energy, he stretched forth his palm and sent a palm strike, a bigger palm made out of ‘qi’ materialized from around him and stretched towards Layton, the energy squeezed out the air and space exerting immense pressure on its attack path as it volleyed forward, the energy contained in the palm eroded its surroundings making it extremely difficult for various laws to properly work around it.
Although Layton couldn’t arouse the laws in his surrounding due to the erosive nature of the ‘qi’ he had no qualms about arousing the laws that made up himself, martial arts are mostly based on the cognition that the body is a small universe unto itself and thusly the small universe that was the body also had its own laws that could be used, with a low hum bio electricity triggered by Layton’s cognition of lightning laws started to surround him, with his magnetic field as a shell he propelled himself with enough speed to escape the swift incoming palm.
Carl watched this blankly, it seemed he was too shocked to move however this was far from the case, although his perception wasn’t anything outstanding, it was good enough for his level and he could clearly see the track of lightning that was caused as a result of Layton’s speedy and forceful movement. With a thought, other arms manifested out of the swamp of energy that was still expanding and shot towards Layton.
Layton stopped suddenly making his rapid movement through the air come to a sudden and screeching halt, he stood there in midair as he felt the attacks coming his way from all directions from his spatial storage device he removed a simple unadorned axe, with a wave the axe cleaved the air and with it the surroundings ignited, the free energy in the air that had been corrupted by carl’s ‘qi’ was stimulated releasing their energy in the form of flames, the molecules and atoms in the air were not exempt from Layton’s law influence as they moved rapidly colliding with each other increasing the temperature and generating more flames, bringing the heat in the area to an all time high, the space was distorted by the massive heat.
The qi constructs that were heading towards Layton were affected by the spatial changes brought about by the immense heat and flames but this only had a short influence on the constructs as they forcefully made their way towards their target the next second, the only issue was that their target had already vanished. Using the influence of the heat on air and space Layton had created a sort of complex afterimage and then used the spatial influence to escape from the area.
‘Above’ Carl thought instantly as he noticed his previous attack had hit nothing, the subtle change in temperature in the area above him had already informed him of Layton’s location, with his thoughts the swamp of qi around him quickly rose up congealing around him to form a defense but it was for naught as Layton descended with immense speed his now smouldering red axe slashing downwards making him seem like a meteor, the unimaginable heat contained in the blade burning the space and with the spatial moves contained in the axe trajectory that he had learned from rip’s moves created a thin subtle spatial crack flowing along the axe trajectory, the cleave separating the qi like butter and the crack swallowing the qi hindering it from congealing back and obstructing Carl’s control, all these happened in a split second as the axe continued to fall towards it target who seemed to be trying to dodge, unfortunately it was a little to late as the blade hit separating Carl’s arm from his body as he leapt away from Layton’s arm range.
With the completion of the attack the immense heat that Layton had forcefully contained in the axe head suddenly went out of control creating a burning tornado clearing out any hidden measures and the remnant qi that was eroding the area.
Carl who was one arm short stared at the flaming tornado blankly, his qi had already gotten rid of the short lived influence of the spatial crack that was as thin as hair and had already spread out again in the form of a swamp, the fire tornado only created a small island in the swamp but this was also destined to be short lived as the temperature wouldn’t be able to sustain its immense heat for too long. As for his lost arm it quickly reappeared Carl’s biology was already deeply eroded by his ‘qi’ and he was akin to a semi elemental energy form, naturally the loss of his arm could be regained in a matter of seconds.
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Carl did not wait for the tornado to dissipate and he immediately took action, with the malleability of his ‘qi’ he quickly manipulated it making the qi absorb the surrounding heat and sending it out of the range of the energy swamp, with the heat quickly dissipating and the tornado disintegrating the sea of qi quickly rose up forming a circular roof planning on leaving Layton no way to escape.