“You… you….”
It took but an instant. Flying Flames suddenly realized that Qin Fen had entered his attack range, and Qin Fen continued to move closer to him in a leisurely manner. Not a bit of an aura was coming out from Qin Fen’s body, but Flying Flames felt quite the sense of danger from the body that was filled with the desire to battle.
An expert? Flying Flames felt that this was absurd. He had faced youngsters who tried opening a sect for the first time, and he always held the upper-hand, toying with them like a cat playing with a mouse. He destroyed his opponents’ desire to battle or he infuriated his opponents to lose their cool, completely crushing them in the end.
However, today Flying Flames felt a reversal of roles. He felt like he was the youngster who hadn’t done much thinking and stupidly came to face a challenge, challenging a tester that was way above him.
Flying Flames felt himself become tinier as he stood before Thirty-Six Hours.
“AH! AHHH!”
He raised his head to the sky and roared. Flying Flames roared to shake away the fears within his heart. The superiority he would always feel when crushing young challengers was forcefully restored by his roars.
His eyes turned blood-red in an instant. His face turned incompatibly rosy as well, and his two white palms turned a blood-like crimson!
Three wild roars evoked his aura!
There was a booster within his body that boosted the energy of the Magma Art. His three roars stimulated the device into rapid operation. His eyes were dead-fixed upon Qin Fen’s body, and the air around his palms began to warp and bloom from the heat.
Qin Fen took the initiative in launching an attack. The power of this single step was much stronger than the ones he took prior.
A single stomp caused Flying Flames’s entire body to jolt, and there was nothing but air beneath his feet in an instant. It was just like he had slipped on a banana peel.
At the same time, the volcanic rock collapsed into countless fragments at the spot stomped by Qin Fen. A huge chunk of volcanic rock split with countless lines in different directions. The stomp was like a heavy hammer striking the earth.
With nothing but air beneath Flying Flames’s feet, naturally, Qin Fen didn’t allow this chance to escape his grasp. The powerful drive of force allowed him to cross the last few meters of distance between them. His arms were level and relaxed, his fists clenched lightly. His entire arm carried a scream akin to a thundering storm as it whipped toward Flying Flames’s skull.
At this moment, Qin Fen pressed against the ground, channeling power through his waist, then to his shoulders, and finally to his arm in one smooth flow. He used none other than the fitness exercise of fist forms he was most familiar with. He struck with the Advancing Whipstrike.
He had practiced this martial art for many years and had fused combat tactics created to slaughter into this attack. He was explosively fast and fierce. He was as unyielding as a bear, and his body moved faster than a cheetah.
“Not good!”
A tiny gap of distraction had appeared in Flying Flames’s mind just now. The space before his eyes suddenly darkened, for Qin Fen’s arm, which was as thick as a pillar and a mere inch away from his cheek, whipped at him with the intent of total annihilation.
Qin Fen had struck with the Advancing Whipstrike in a determination to win. The Dragon Elephant Prajna Art was infused into it as well. Even a donkey would be destroyed on the spot if struck by this attack.
In this moment of extreme danger, Flying Flames’s forty years of life experience finally revealed itself. His body pulled back to lean to the side, and he raised his arms over his shoulders. His entire body was now slanted sixty degrees in order to dispel the force.
The arm, like a steel whip, smashed heavily upon the forearm Flying Flames was using to protect his skull. The surge of power made Flying Flames instantly feel as if a high-speed maglev motorcycle had crashed into his body rather than an arm. His feet had yet to stand firm on the ground. This single attack caused Flying Flames’s sixty-degree slanted body to lose balance. He was wiped off his feet once more. His entire body seemed to be lying down in the middle of the air.
Within the sight captured by Flying Flames’s eyes, Qin Fen’s left foot enlarged at extreme speeds. One didn’t need any of the senses of a martial artist to know that this attack was certainly going to strike Flying Flames’s chest.
The arm of Flying Flames, which had been knocked away by the whip strike, could not return to block his chest in time. Qin Fen’s left foot was already embedded in Flying Flames’s chest.
This was the Shaolin Arhat Fist’s Treading the Mountains! The name of this move, nearly long forgotten by Flying Flames, popped out within Flying Flames’s in an instant. By now, Qin Fen had used the force of his step to soar high into the air, and he looked down at Flying Flames’s heavily injured body as it flew into the volcano.
As the sound of Flying Flames’s sternum fracturing rang out, the system transmitted a different piece of information: three ribs had pierced his heart. His life was terminated.
Before the body could fall into the lava, Flying Flames faded to nothing before Qin Fen’s eyes. He disappeared quickly.
I don’t accept this! AHH! Flying Flames roared madly in his heart, stifled. Thirty-Six Hours’ luck was too good. Not only had the Treading the Mountains move broke several of his ribs, his fractured ribs just so happened to pierce his heart. It was too late to display even a sliver of the Magma Art’s superiority. Flying Flames just died in this screwed up way. A feeling of humiliation, one that he never felt before, flooded his mind.
“Three ribs should have pierced his heart.”
Qin Fen watched as Flying Flames faded away with a face of grief and indignation. He calculated the results of his move based on the angle of impact.
This move was not the ordinary Treading the Mountains. It was fused with Butcher’s combat skills of slaughter. When he struck with this attack just now, he chose the angle of application in an extremely craft and hidden manner. It appeared to be a normal Treading the Mountains, but all Qin Fen had to do was apply a slight minute change and he was able to cause three ribs to pierce the chest.
Qin Fen slowly mobilizes strength within his body. According to the calculated probabilities, the second person to face the challenger would possess a strength a bit stronger than the first’s. Though there were normally limits to how powerful a tester could be, the third person to face the challenger could not be determined by the calculated probabilities. Sometimes they were extremely strong. Sometimes they were extremely weak.
“Excuse me, do you want to undergo the final test immediately?”
The synthetic voice sounded in the air, lacking all emotional whatsoever. Qin Fen was curious about who his third opponent would be. He simply nodded his head.
The stage changed once more. This time the scene was a grassy prairie that spanned as far as the eye could see. It was considered an extremely fair stage in the battle network.
A fair stage? Could the opponent be very weak?
Qin Fen was a bit skeptical. It seemed like his luck today was quite decent.
In a spot not too far away, a person’s figure rapidly formed under the catalysis of the system.
All the hairs on Qin Fen’s entire body instantly stood on their ends, and his mind immediately entered an unprecedented tension at this moment. The true energy formed by the Dragon Elephant Prajna Art felt like an azure dragon, coursing and circulating throughout his body without end.
An expert!
Qin Fen had been tempering himself nonstop these days. Though there was a fixed distance between the two, Qin Fen could feel the strength of his opponent the instant he appeared. Qin Fen was completely able to feel that this opponent was even stronger than the State of Korea’s Park Jong-Hwan!
“The Dragon Elephant Prajna Art? And the Shaolin Arhat Fist?”
There was not a hint of scorn in the bewildered voice. The information that seeped out was instead caution.
Compared to the previous two people, the third martial artist to face the challenger Qin Fen was clearly younger. He was probably about the same age as Qin Fen. His build was strong and muscular, spelling that the man had undergone genuinely difficult training. His body automatically exuded a threatening and sharp aura. It was as if what stood before Qin Fen wasn’t a man but an incomparable sharp steel blade.
Bull Demon King. Height is a hundred and eighty-three centimeters. Arm span is a hundred and ninety centimeters. Martial arts used are unknown. Combat techniques are unknown. Battle record is a hundred and thirty-two wins out of a hundred and thirty-two battles!
Qin Fen was stunned for a moment before re-examining the opponent before him. He was more curious about how his opponent hid his martial arts despite the shocking win rate.
The battle network provided a function that allowed people to hide their martial arts and combat skills in their profile. However, it required a certain price. Quite a bit of money was needed in order to hide one’s own data for a certain amount of time.
If someone still wanted to continue to hide their information when time expired, then he would need to spend money once more, essentially continuing to buy this function.
Many people were willing to spend money on the battle network and buy all sorts of virtual items to be used in virtual combat. However, very few people would spend money to buy the function that allowed someone to hide his martial arts.
One reason was that this function was expensive. The second reason was that this function wasn’t really effective. When a battle dragged out long enough without determining the victor and the loser, naturally, both sides would know of each other’s combat skills and techniques.
Even if someone is unable to learn of his opponent’s combat skills and techniques after a whole day of fighting, knowing the names of his opponent’s combat skills ahead of time wouldn’t be much help anyway.
A man who was willing to spend money on hiding his combat skills either came from a family with too much money or had something he needed to hide.
Someone from a family with too much money was very likely to buy a top-notch martial art when buying a martial art. Plus, Qin Fen’s opponent had that sharp aura all over his body. He could be said to be the strongest of the three testers.
Bull Demon King calmly circled around Qin Fen, moving with slow footsteps. So someone who uses the bitter internal art and the fitness exercise of fist forms had come to do his third challenge for opening a sect?
Qin Fen slowly clenched his hands into fists. He already stepped into the horse stance, slowly shifting into the Shaolin Arhat Fist’s rising stance. Though this fitness exercise of fist forms was quite ordinary and simple, its rising stance was quite decent. This stance could easily flow into any combat style with this set of fist forms. Quite a few other fist forms and palm forms had rising stances where shadows of the Shaolin Arhat Fist could be seen.
It took but an instant! Qin Fen’s mind had already focused completely on Bull Demon King.
Whether it was facing an opponent with a super-bad win rate or Bull Demon King with a hundred percent win rate, Qin Fen would never treat his opponents lightly.
“On the battlefield, you’re simply seeking to die if you look down on an opponent.” Butcher’s famous words had long since been firmly imprinted in Qin Fen’s mind.
Having been locked on by someone’s mind, Bull Demon King’s brow twitched wildly a few times.
Why did he feel such an extreme sense of danger? Bull Demon King was quite curious. Such feelings had often only arisen when the minds of extremely powerful people focused their attention greatly on him. But clearly, there wasn’t such a person focusing their attention on him. Why did this strange feeling arise in him?
This man known as Thirty-Six Hours possessed an aura that couldn’t possibly match the sharp and threatening aura of an expert. It was also impossible that Thirty-Six Hours was at the master level in martial arts at his age, able to turn a sharp aura to a soft aura. This was too much of a fantasy.
There was a direct relationship between one’s aura and one’s realm in martial arts. Even if a young expert understood what it meant to be a true expert, turning one’s aura into something gentle and blending it into the surrounding environment was still an impossibility for someone so young.
Knowing and actual complete comprehension were two completely different concepts.
Bull Demon King didn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it. That the young man before him, who revealed only his eyes, had reached the so-called Master Realm.
“Fight!”
The voice that marked the start for the final fight rang in their ears. Bull Demon King’s eyes became fiery hot in an instant, true energy rushing to his throat from his dantian region in a single breath. A heavy roar exploded out from his vocal cords and the bones of his entire body. His arms, infused with energy and power, caused the air to scream with the wind as he made his move!