Xu Xianwen possessed extraordinarily sharp senses. Realizing he still could not gain the upper hand, he shifted his tactics without hesitation, retreating to a greater distance and repeatedly kicking and hurling broken debris from the dilapidated temple toward Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan did not let down his guard. Swinging his saber in broad, sweeping arcs, he parried every object hurtling in his direction.
Yet despite seemingly being kicked over at random, each piece carried heavy, shifting jin. This alone made it clear that Xu Xianwen was also a master of throwing arts.
Chen Chuan grew even more cautious. He knew such power would never be exerted without purpose; this barrage was merely a prelude, and the true killing move was concealed behind it.
Sure enough, moments later, a dull boom echoed through the hall, followed by a sudden rush of wind pressure. A gigantic, glaring deity statue expanded rapidly before his eyes—Xu Xianwen had shoved the broken seated idol from the altar straight at him.
The statue stood five to six meters tall, its six outward-stretching arms clutching assorted weapons, blotting out nearly his entire field of view. Rather than dodging, Chen Chuan raised his saber with both hands and slashed viciously forward!
A crescent of blade light bloomed within the ruined temple, cleaving the colossal deity clean in two. The deliberate release of his jin shattered the stone into countless fragments that surged backward in a violent backdraft.
Just as the shards scattered outward, his senses flared with sudden danger. Flicking his blade upward, he deflected a cane spear that thrust in from the side. Yet the force behind it felt off—it had been thrown.
A twitch struck his brow. Xu Xianwen had seized that split second to close the distance. Thrusting one hand out to shove Chen Chuan's saber aside, his other hand jabbed straight toward Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan did not panic in the slightest. With a fluid pull, he drew the short blade at his waist in a flash, delivering a series of rapid cuts. Knowing that simple thrusts could be parried, he applied dragging, slicing jin to every strike.
Astonishingly, Xu Xianwen made no attempt to evade. He allowed the blade to carve into his arms, head, and torso, his outstretched hand lunging recklessly toward Chen Chuan’s face.
Chen Chuan calmly tilted his head, feeling a razor-sharp draft graze past his cheek. Having run out of room to swing his short blade, he immediately dropped it, balled his fingers into a tight fist, and slammed a punch squarely into the man’s face.
With a tremendous boom, Xu Xianwen was blasted backward, tearing a massive hole through the ancient temple's wall. With dawn steadily breaking outside, sunlight poured into the interior, brightening the gloom in an instant.
As Chen Chuan bent down to retrieve his short blade, he noticed that his boundary credential had gone completely silent. It had clearly been destroyed—which explained Xu Xianwen’s desperate maneuver just now.
Yet Chen Chuan paid it little mind. The device had never been something he was obligated to protect, so he had not even factored it into his evasive movement.
Besides, the Disposal Bureau undoubtedly already knew their location and heading. Even without the signal, they could simply follow the trail of destruction left in their wake.
Saber in hand, he walked out through the breach. Behind him, half the ancient temple's wall collapsed with a thunderous crash, billowing thick clouds of dust that set his cloak fluttering.
Xu Xianwen was already climbing to his feet, standing along the edge of the mountainside. He glared at Chen Chuan and wiped the blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. His arms, face, and chest were crisscrossed with deep gashes, the flesh peeling back to expose bone, yet the wounds were already knitting together at visible speed.
However, the real damage Chen Chuan had dealt went far beyond those cuts. Due to the ritual's effect, a massive amount of Xu Xianwen's spilled blood had vanished without a trace. By rough estimate, he had lost roughly a tenth of his total volume.
To Xu Xianwen, such a loss was inconsequential. With the release of the vital essence stored in his heart, fresh blood was rapidly generated, restoring him to peak condition in mere moments.
A cord was looped around his right wrist, tethered to the other end of the cane spear. With a single tug, he yanked the weapon back into his grasp. He had dared to throw it earlier precisely because he had prepared for it all along.
Yet he chose not to reengage Chen Chuan right now. Giving the young man a lingering glare, he abruptly turned and bounded down the mountain slope.
Chen Chuan pursued immediately. Ahead, an open expanse unfolded, giving way to a limpid lake bordered by dense reeds. White reed plumes swayed gently in the breeze blowing across the water. On the far side of the lake, the first blush of dawn broke, bathing the rippling surface in a mantle of golden-red light.
Watching Xu Xianwen's figure rapidly recede down the slope, Chen Chuan bounded downward as well, giving chase at breakneck speed.
On the other side of the ridge, an off-road vehicle sped frantically through the mountain woods. The man in the back seat urged the driver forward without pause. "Faster! Step on it!"
He was Hu Ying, a reporter for Quickstep News Hotspot.
He had just learned through inside channels that Mount Motie had come under attack by armed thugs, and that one of the defenders was the very person who had beaten Wei Wusheng to death outside the tournament arena.
The moment he heard, he realized this was the scoop of a lifetime!
Because the entire area had been jammed and deliberately hushed up, the outside world had virtually no access to firsthand information.
Since they happened to be nearby, he had ordered his driver to detour along the duo's suspected pursuit route. Though perilous, a successful report would yield unprecedented rewards.
"We are currently driving along the route of the two combatants, trailing the path of a battle between two third limit combatants! Good heavens, what is that..."
Amid the violent shaking of the vehicle, he caught sight of a structure collapsing with a roar on a distant hill. Excitement flared within him. Look, it had to be them!
"Folks, can you even imagine this?
"Everywhere these two pass is left in absolute shambles! Walls torn down, vehicles flipped, trees snapped in half! It's simply incredible—they are practically two Iron Horse armored trucks manufactured by Fenghai Company!"
Having smoothly slipped in an ad for his sponsor, he effortlessly transitioned back into his dramatic flair. "I can feel my whole body trembling! I'm chasing after them right now, but who knows if this will incur their wrath? Any second now, they might tear right across our car and snuff out my life..."
With that, he shoved the driver. "Buddy, don't be scared! I'm right here with you!"
Sweating bullets behind the wheel, the driver shuddered from the shove, nearly swerving into a ditch. He yelled in fury, "Can you quit touching me?!" Yet his outburst only prompted a burst of wild, exhilarating laughter.
As the broadcast continued, more and more viewers tuned in. The audience count surging through the boundary credential climbed at a staggering rate. The realization that Chen Chuan was involved stirred immense curiosity, and spectators who had witnessed his match outside the tournament arena flocked to the feed in droves.
Over at the Disposal Bureau, the team quickly picked up on the situation. Captain Guan took a glance and asked, "Have our people arrived yet?"
"They're en route!"
After a brief pause, Captain Guan made a decisive call. "Allocate some bandwidth resources to that reporter. Clear up his feed and let him get a better look so we can assess the situation over there first."
Though Chen Chuan had started his pursuit a beat late, the open terrain offered zero visual obstruction. Steadily building up speed, he rapidly closed the gap, flicking several stones from his fingers.
Sensing the wind slicing in from behind, Xu Xianwen sidestepped to evade. The dodge inevitably slowed his pace, and hearing the pursuer closing in, he let out a sharp yell, grasped his spear in one hand, and spun around to thrust backward!
Chen Chuan tilted his head to dodge, driving his saber straight forward. Xu Xianwen channeled a burst of jin and leveled his weapon horizontally to block. The impact of their competing forces flattened a wide swathe of grass and leaves all around them.
Riding his unbroken momentum, Chen Chuan bore down with his blade, forcing Xu Xianwen several paces back before launching a flurry of rapid, ferocious slashes.
Having taken the worse end of that initial collision, Xu Xianwen had no choice but to parry while retreating. Every step sank deep into the ground, gouging one pit after another, which only hindered him from making a clean getaway.
Through their repeated exchanges, Chen Chuan had grown thoroughly familiar with Xu Xianwen's fighting style and grasped his breathing rhythm.
Though this man's jin variations were remarkably formidable, once Chen Chuan understood the specific jin he cultivated, he knew precisely how to counter it.
He had no need to improvise on the fly; his instructors had already provided him with mature, battle-tested solutions. Still, knowing the theory was one thing—executing it in the crucible of real combat was another entirely.
Chen Chuan drew a deep breath. Through the clash so far, the fruits of his recent cultivation had fully manifested. The mutated tissue throughout his body hummed in an active, exhilarated state, bringing him to his absolute peak.
After another string of relentless cleaves, he caught the barest hesitation in his foe's respiratory transition. Letting out a thunderous roar, the layers of mutated tissue across his body coiled and rotated, channeling his jin into the blade before he swung it down in a devastating executioner's slash!
Crack!
The cane sword snapped clean through. Its momentum unchecked, the saber descended along Xu Xianwen's centerline, carving a long, deep gash from his face down across his chest and abdomen.
Yet as the tip of the blade bit into the flesh, Chen Chuan felt an extraordinary resilience in the underlying muscle, preventing the cut from sinking too deep.
His face twisted in savagery, Xu Xianwen flicked his wrists, hurling both halves of the broken spear shaft at Chen Chuan. Chen Chuan twisted his saber and deflected them away.
Xu Xianwen leaped backward to create distance. Fresh blood streamed down his body, dripping onto the earth below, yet in the blink of an eye, the wounds rapidly knit closed under the nourishment of his vital essence.
A sinister, vicious grin spread across his face. Ripping away his shredded coat, he bared a well-muscled, taut torso covered in intricate ritual tattoos across his chest and back.
This was an embedded religious ritual of the Secret Snake Cult. It not only drastically amplified his vitality, but also allowed his body to withstand immense doses of pharmaceuticals, enabling rapid recovery even from grievous injury.
Yet that was far from its true function.
Watching Chen Chuan advance once more with blade in hand, Xu Xianwen inhaled sharply. In that instant, the ritual patterns vanished from his skin as if sinking deep into his flesh. In their place, blue-green, scale-like mutated tissue rippled across his cheeks and body, encasing every inch of his exposed skin.
Crossing his forearms, he met the incoming slash head-on, producing a resounding metallic clang at the point of impact.
Chapter 386