1773 Darksteel
Li Baiquang, leader of the 9th battalion, struggled to figure out just how he could win against the man in front of him.
He had exchanged a few attacks with Graham, and even with just that, he could tell that defeating the man would take more than just someone in the Saint Transformation 8th realm.
Graham breathed deeply as well. The man in front of him was quite strong. He wasn't someone he could simply defeat in a couple of hits.
It was going to take more than just that.
Li Baiquang, the old man, rushed forward and slammed down his staff from a distance. The staff suddenly manifested a large illusory version of itself that swung down at Graham.
Graham put his two arms above him and defended himself. He felt his knees dig into the ground due to the attacks, but aside from that nothing happened to him.
Graham dashed forward after that, throwing a Wood attack using his Dragonheart Gauntlet, letting the enemy distract himself with that attack.
The old man swung his staff, hitting the wood attack away, and quickly created wooden roots that streaked out of the ground to catch Graham as he flew forward.
Graham easily burst the roots apart with just his physical force and slammed his fist onto the old man.
A single talisman floated out of the old man's body, slowly glowing with a barrier around it. It dissipated a moment later and the talisman burned itself away.
It was a single-use talisman and its expense caused the old man some grief. That talisman had been quite expensive when he bought it in the Golden auction a long time ago.
Graham moved back quickly as the staff swung back toward him. He put his hands to his side to protect himself as the staff grew inside and hit him again.
A wood-Qi barrier appeared and broke at the same time as Graham protected himself. The barrier technique provided by the gauntlet wasn't very good in this battle, unfortunately.
Graham was sent flying away, but not hurt seriously enough to worry about anything.
He stopped and looked back in time to activate his shoes and run out of the way of another attack.
A lightning bolt flashed past him, striking the ground right behind him.
At the same time, Graham closed the distance between them once again and went in for a punch. The gauntlet activated and fake weight was added to his attack.
A wall of vines appeared before the old man, seeking to protect him, but it failed.
Graham's attack broke past the entangled vines and punched the old man in the chest, sending him flying back.
The old man hit the barrier that was formed around the soldiers who were empowering him. He quickly got back up, looking toward Graham with a hateful sneer on his face.
"You are quite strong," he said. "I can't believe someone like you has no ranks at all."
"That's the truth," Graham said. He didn't want to tell anyone that he was Alex's father just on the off-chance that everyone swarmed him just so they could force Alex to make a wrong decision in the heat of the battle.
"I know you are weak in cultivation," the old man said. "Tell me, how did you improve your body to be this strong?"
"Through sheer determination and grit," Graham answered. "So, are we going to keep talking or will we fight?"
He was keeping his attention on the outside as well, but no one seemed as though they were going to help in this fight. Whatever Alex was doing, he was making sure there were enough fighters in the area to keep the others occupied.
"I don't have to keep fighting," the old man said with a snort. "I just have to keep you distracted long enough so that we have enough soldiers to overwhelm you all. What? You thought our only way of victory was to defeat you?"
"No," Graham said. "But thank you for confirming what you were planning on doing. It seems I cannot afford to waste a lot of time either."
The old man frowned. He wondered what Graham was going to do.
Suddenly, a deep black sword appeared in Graham's hand. A large, heavy sword with a slightly curved edge on one side that was unimaginably sharp.
The sword sparkled with glittering bits in the dark material, as though looking at the starry night in the sky.
The large sword looked extremely uncomfortable to handle, but in Graham's massive hands, it somehow looked normal. As if such a large sword were meant to be held one-handed.
Graham held onto his sword that his son had made for him. Alex had made the sword according to what would be effective for him and had done something toward the end that Graham still struggled to understand.
He called it Bloodforging and had taken Graham's blood essence to make it.
The sword was apparently eternally bonded to him until he died and would grow a sword spirit if given enough time.
Graham couldn't tell if anything had happened to the sword at all, but he did trust his son, so he could only wait and see the benefits of what had been done to his sword.
"A sword?" the old man raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You're a swordsman, huh?"
"This is the first time I'm using Darksteel in actual combat," he said. "Let us see just how helpful a sword is to a swordsman in battle."
As soon as Graham said it, he felt an aura surround him softly as something whispered in his ears. He could hear faint sounds that sought to affect him in someway, but he only scoffed it away.
"No wonder you were sitting around doing nothing," Graham said. "You were trying to affect my mind, was it?"
The old man frowned immediately. He couldn't understand how someone so weak in cultivation could resist his Song of Binding.
Graham rushed forward without waiting and swung Darksteel with both hands, striking the old man sideways.
The old man rushed backward to get out of the range of Graham's attack since Graham had no way of attacking him as long as he was out of range.
At the same time, he sent out a blast of lightning with Immortal Qi that flew directly at Graham.
Graham's eyes saw the lightning blast form in the man's hands and then come for him. The light of the lightning brightened everything around him, leaving shadows everywhere at the same time.
Graham acted at once and teleported.
With the Flickering Shadows technique, he arrived behind the man and swung his sword.
The man reacted in time and put up a defense, but even as he did, Graham added fake weight into his attack and swung.
The already heavy Darksteel, swinging with added fake weight made it so that the attack Graham made was one of the strongest he had ever made.
Darksteel cleaved through the defensive technique, then through the man's body, and surprisingly, even his Nascent soul.
In one attack, he blasted the man into many bits, destroying all of him at once.
Graham looked at the aftermath with wide eyes as he himself hadn't expected to be this strong.
