Gao tried to get up only for his spine and arm joints to spike up in extreme pain.
He wouldn’t be able to move at all thanks to pushing his body beyond its limits.
After confirming that Gao was fine and was simply lying on the ground unable to move due to joint pain Yousti looked away.
Gao Luen felt his hand that was bound to his sword with silk pull his body away into the trees.
It was a bumpy ride and subsequently painful for his joints too.
Yousti looked towards the smiling with a smile on his face.
The man’s intent was full of pure desire and pleasure.
It was full of black obsession too.
‘Is this guy a madman?’ Yousti wondered.
That would be bad because the man had a diffused consciousness.
A signature of a psychic being.
That meant that the smiling man was a perpetual.
And this kind of intent was not something a very sane person would have.
The smiling man spoke first.
“Your soul!”
“My soul?”
Yousri was curious about what his soul looked like to the smiling man.
He had met other perpetuals but they had never described his soul.
All of the perpetuals that visited his Martial Academy came with the goal of seeing what the ‘new perpetual’ was trying to do.
But bizarrely they almost always differentiated between Yousti and other martial artists as a perpetual.
The psychic perpetuals specifically.
So Yousti had begun questioning if his soul was genuinely different somehow.
Something that made others call him a perpetual despite his obviously aging body.
‘Maybe Neoth wasn’t suffering from delulu when he called me a perpetual?
Or he saw something that made him think I was really special.’
The smiling man continued.
“Your soul is layered and full to the brim with something unfathomably ancient! You must be another perpetual because it takes on the form of Taiji!”
Yousti briefly contemplated what that could mean.
‘I have a non-humanoid soul?
No he just said my soul had an ancient feeling taiji.’
Instead of responding the smiling man reached his hand forward trying to touch Yousti just like with Gao earlier.
The next moment that hand was on the ground, severed.
The man stopped smiling as he fell to the ground.
His ankles were no longer attached to his legs.
“Why am I not healing.” He muttered in shock.
Yousti didn’t just separate his hands and feet.
He had used the heavenly escape to sever the consciousness within those his body as well.
Preventing whatever regeneration or ability he was trying to use.
Yousti’s body became a blur for a single instant.
Center Unwind
Center Cut
A single strand of silk cut through the man’s neck.
But the string got stuck halfway through.
‘Just how tough is this guys body?’
Yousti observed how all the pleasure within his intent became red with anger.
“Why am I not healing immediately!” The man was red with anger as he yelled.
Yousti simply grabbed both sides of the string and began pulling back and forth trying to saw through the rest of the guys head, while restraining his limbs with silk at the same time.
He kept on using the heavenly escape too to sever the consciousness in the neck as he sawed through.
‘What a shame.
This perpetual is only a weaker silent type who can only see in the warp.
His regeneration is countered by Heavenly Escape.’
Yousti finished sawing through the man’s head after several minutes.
Eventually the intent faded from the corpse and Yousti patted his hands.
‘Note to self, Heavenly Escape counters perpetual regeneration.’
Yousti began walking away to find where he had dragged Gao to.
“Your soul is so bright and colorful!”
Yousti stopped in his tracks.
‘So there’s more to this guy after all.’
He turned around only to see that the man was smiling once more and was completely intact.
“I didn’t see you regenerate from your corpse?”
The man’s smile widened even further and became even more deranged as his intent began to mix in a gold joy with the pleasure and desire.
“What does my past corpse have to do with the me of now!”
Yousti grimaced.
“When will you ever stop yelling?”
Yousti spun his internal energy within his own body to perform center winding, storing up potential energy to instantly release release the first form of Silk Song.
Center Cut
Combined with Heavenly Escape Yousti once again swung a silk string like a sword towards the once again smiling man.
But this time the string was repelled.
This time the man’s body was even more tough and indestructible.
The man ran forward and attempted to tackle Yousti but he stepped aside and dodged the attack.
An ominous intent formed around the mans hands as he missed the tackle and instead stopped just as he was touching a tree.
The tree instantly burst apart.
Yousti coldly analyzed the missing chunk of tree that the Smiling Man had just placed his hand on.
‘So he attacks with some kind of touch activated ability.’
He had completely suppressed his presence and snuck up on the passing group of martial artists and used his hands to instantly kill all of them except for that one talented martial artist.
He is a perpetual who seems to become more durable the more he’s hurt.
So the only questions left are his motivations and the details of his abilities.
And how he regenerated when he was screaming about not being able to.
‘He doesn’t move very fast so I have time to figure this out.’
The main dilemma presented by this hostile perpetual is that Yousti can’t think of a way to kill him if he just keeps on mysteriously coming back like that.
The man found himself suddenly trapped and bound by countless silk threads that came from seemingly nowhere.
They had been discreetly strung all around the environment by Yousti from the moment he had arrived.
The Smiling Man struggled but Yousti just pulled his finger and tightened the binds even more.
But this time the Smiling Man did not stop smiling and just stared at Yousti.
“So what’s your name. I thought most perpetuals were benevolent towards mankind?”
The smiling man just began laughing.
“Oh this one is a very strong.”
Yousti frowned.
‘It’s one of those creepy types.’
“Well I’ve had enough of you. Can’t let a serial killer immortal fuck around.”
Yousti gripped with his full strength and began furiously pulling on his strings.
“Why.”
Yousti strained as he kept tightening the strings.
“Are.”
Every muscle bulged.
“You.”
He infused his whole body with intent creating gang qi.
“So tough!”
The Smiling man was torn to shreds as the strings became too tight for his body.
Yousti let out a heavy breath.
“Let’s see how he regenerates from this.”
Yousti watched intently trying to observe the Smiling Mans regeneration.
He squatted down and observed the fading intent of the man’s corpse.
Five minutes passed.
“Hmmm… Did he really just die? Such a shame, I though he was a proper perpetual.”
Yousti turned around and began walking away before he heard laughing again.
Center Cut!
“Die!”
The string barely even scratch the fully intact Smiling Man, instead just wrapping around him as the string couldn’t pass through his body.
Word intent swirled around the his body as he began walking forwards with a stretched out hand.
‘So he must have some kind of quantum superposition regeneration that only restores him when you look away.
And every time he uses it he becomes even tougher.’
Yousti pressed his lips together as he decided his next course of action.
“Well, this sucks. Never liked digging graves. But I can make an exception for your early one.”
Yousti had decided to bury the Smiling Man instead of dealing with his warp power bullshit.