Taking the brunt of this heavy, forceful blow, the Iron Demon's body sank downward. He instantly contracted his mutated tissue to arrest the blade's downward cleave.
Chen Chuan did not persist with the cut, however. Withdrawing his blade before the wound could knit, he swung it in a succession of rapid slashes.
Impeded by his severed bones and muscle, the Iron Demon could neither adjust his movements nor marshal his power properly. He was reduced to barely warding off the blows. Under the oppressive onslaught of Chen Chuan's relentless blade, several more deep gashes opened across his body. Grunting gutturally, he staggered backward step after step.
Yet Chen Chuan showed no sign of letting up. Just as he prepared to press on with his ceaseless assault, the Iron Demon could endure it no longer and unleashed another violent burst of jin. Only then did Chen Chuan take a step back and withdraw to the outer perimeter.
Standing there, he flicked the blade outward with a light snap of his wrist, casting off the entwined tendrils and messy scraps of flesh onto the ground.
The Iron Demon's wounds were currently knitting at rapid speed. Freshly sprouting tendrils filled and repaired the gouged gaps, while fractured bones sealed back together. In just a few breaths, he looked as though he had never been injured at all.
Chen Chuan's expression remained utterly calm. He had noticed just now that although the Iron Demon's speed and strength had kept pace, the sense of oppression he radiated was actually inferior to before.
To his mind, power and speed could only be fully realized through complete coordination. If one possessed raw strength without sufficient control and agility, or if moving at high speed made it impossible to steer oneself freely, true technique was out of the question. And right now, the Iron Demon suffered from exactly these flaws.
In other words, the subsequent increases had not been beneficial; rather, they had become a hindrance.
He looked at the tendrils sprouting across the man's frame. As a fighter, the Iron Demon could hardly be ignorant of this, yet it might not have been his own choice.
Chen Chuan slowly leveled the tip of his blade at his foe, the vapor and the radiant mist rising languidly from his body.
None of that concerned him. He only knew that once he completed this mission, he could return to Center City and receive guidance for the next tier of power.
And before that, he had to cut down whatever stood in his path.
Flicking his blade, he surged forward. Amid whirling arcs of blade light, his saber repeatedly clashed with the spear in the demon's grasp. After a mere few exchanges, he felt his opponent's power begin to scatter, his speed steadily lagging behind.
With a sudden sweep of his blade, Chen Chuan knocked the spear shaft aside, then executed two rapid slashes in immediate succession. Though the Iron Demon warded them off, his stance was visibly unraveled, and his center of gravity drifted off-balance as he shifted his footing.
Gathering his jin, Chen Chuan thrust his long saber swiftly forward, stabbing into the hollow of the Demon's shoulder. The force penetrated straight through sinew and bone, threatening to blast apart the flesh and skeletal structure there in the very next instant.
The Iron Demon's expression shifted. He mobilized his mutated tissue there, contracting it desperately, while the scant vital essence stored in his heart surged outward in an attempt to mend the damage at once.
Seeing his opponent's jin concentrating there, Chen Chuan's eyes flashed. He abruptly drew back and whipped his blade outward in a vicious upward slash.
This strike was lightning-fast, timed precisely for the delay in the demon's mutated tissue response. Thus, with a clean hiss, the arm holding the spear was sheared off and sent flying into the air!
The Iron Demon stared at him with bloodshot eyes, appearing completely numb to pain. His other whip-like arm lashed violently toward Chen Chuan, coiling tightly around his torso in an attempt to yank him closer.
Chen Chuan immediately planted his feet apart and dropped his center of gravity, anchoring himself motionless. At the same time, he inhaled deeply, his skin burning hotter still.
Reaching out with one hand, he seized the whip-appendage and yanked it taut, bringing his saber flush against it with a vicious slice that severed the appendage clean through.
Without pausing to shake off the segments still wrapped around him, he kicked off the ground and lunged forward. In a flash, he closed in on the Iron Demon, using the momentum of his charge to drive his saber into the creature's abdomen. The blade pierced straight through the outer binding layers, plunged into the internal organs, and only came to a halt when it met the hard spine.
Although this blow did not run the Iron Demon entirely through, it forced him to stagger back. Chen Chuan grabbed hold of the severed whip-appendage, dragged him close, released the hilt with his left hand, and drove a fist into the demon's chest and belly. Tugging hard once more, he pivoted in with an elbow strike that slammed directly into his face!
The blow erupted with a thunderous crack. Countless fissures spiderwebbed across the iron mask. The Iron Demon's head snapped back as shattered teeth and blood sprayed outward, his body stumbling back.
Yet after only a few steps back, the jin that had penetrated into his chest and abdomen erupted. The area bundled by tough sinewy cords detonated outward. Although the tendrils there instinctively began to draw together to heal, their rate of repair had visibly slowed.
Chen Chuan's eyes flickered slightly. Repairing wounds demanded vital essence; the current state indicated that his opponent's vital essence and changeless mind were failing to keep up with the combat attrition.
Stepping forward, Chen Chuan took hold of the saber's hilt, gave it a twist, and wrenched it free. Amid the Iron Demon's stifled groan, he seized the demon's remaining arm, turned, and hurled him violently into the earth. Dust billowed as the impact gouged a deep crater.
Coughing up a mouthful of blood, the Iron Demon attempted to roll over and rise, but he was barely halfway up before Chen Chuan kicked him flat. Chen Chuan then gripped the solitary arm, hoisted his entire body into the air, and slammed him down violently onto the other side.
With a heavy thud, another thunderous boom resounded.
Lying there, the Iron Demon struggled to get up again, but what awaited him was another ferocious slam, followed by a fourth, a fifth...
After an untold number of impacts, the Iron Demon could no longer rise. By now, his body had turned almost entirely pale, as though it had been soaked in water for days. The once-full muscles and sinews beneath his skin were now shriveled and withered, leaving only thin layers of skin clinging to bone, while his eyes were sunken deep into their sockets.
His chest heaved raggedly. Above his line of sight stood the figure looking down upon him, though the billowing dust obscured his view, veiling the face from sight.
Chen Chuan drove the Xuejun Saber into the ground and drew the short knife from his waist. Sinking to one knee, he lined the blade up against the demon's throat, seized his topknot with his other hand to pull his head up, and looked straight ahead. "Have a safe journey," he said.
With that, he exerted strength in his arm. With a wet scrape, the weight in his hand suddenly lightened, and he rose to his feet holding the Iron Demon's severed head.
Sheathing the knife at his waist, he brought the head before him and reached out to peel away the remnants of the broken mask. Beneath it was a face battered, swollen, and smeared with blood. Yet it was faintly recognizable as relatively young—and from the contours, Chen Chuan felt as though he had seen it somewhere before.
Even as he scrutinized it, the eyes on that face rolled back, and a white appendage shot from one of them, stabbing violently toward his eyes.
Yet the moment it drew close, a powerful hand clamped down with a sharp snap, locking it firmly in place so it could advance no further.
Expression unchanged, Chen Chuan looked at the thing. Wrinkled all over, it resembled an elongated brain, writhing incessantly. Under the pressure of his fingers, its front tip curled and buckled.
He realized that this might be the creature's true form—some kind of activated metamorphosis.
According to Instructor Tian Yu and Advisor Rao, even if the body was destroyed, so long as this thing survived, the entity could endure. By taking over a new body—provided the new vessel was originally of the same tier—it could rapidly regain its former level of prowess through certain unique methods.
However, the thing itself possessed little raw strength. At least when facing a fighter at full power, it had virtually no recourse other than ambushes.
Chen Chuan exerted force in his grip and crushed it completely. Under the impact of his jin, its tendrils and main body detonated outward, reduced to miniscule bits of gore that splattered in a wet cascade across the ground.
According to the briefing files, crushing this thing essentially neutralized the threat; the rest could be ignored. Still, to be safe, incinerating everything was best. For now, however, the situation with his teammates took priority. He could deal with that first and return to dispose of the remains later.
He tied the Iron Demon's head to his waist. After a thought, he retrieved the mask and placed it back over the face. Walking over to the side, he took back the Xuejun Saber, picked up the two broken spear shafts, and walked toward the riverbank.
Up ahead, the battle was still raging, but all four combatants could hear that the commotion on the other side had ceased. Shielded by dust and foliage, none of the four knew who had emerged victorious.
The two commissioned warriors had remained untroubled throughout, convinced that victory would inevitably belong to their Commandant. Yet as the distant figure came into view and their eyes fell upon the head at his waist, their minds suffered a catastrophic shock. The solid defensive postures they had maintained crumbled in an instant.
The Iron Demon was not just their superior; he was their pillar of spirit. They could hardly fathom that the Commandant they saw as invincible and peerless could be defeated and decapitated.
Under this shock, their biological fields turned frenzied. Had they held to a staunch defense, they might have held out longer—hard to say for how long if Chen Chuan stayed out of the fray. But with this sudden lapse, Yuan Qiuyuan and Qin Qingque seized upon the flaws at once.
Yuan Qiuyuan gave a rough scoff. His staff shot out like a venomous dragon, snaking past the spear, its tip striking directly onto his opponent's forehead. The helmet exploded with a loud crack, snapping the man's head violently backward.
With a roaring shout, Yuan Qiuyuan leapt from the spot, raising the staff high with both hands in midair and bringing it down in a savage strike. With a resounding thud, it smashed squarely onto the man's forehead. Blood jetted from the warrior's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; the struck portion of his skull caved in entirely. He wobbled twice, then fell straight backward.
On Qin Qingque's side, a clear shout rang out. A glint of cold steel pierced right through the neck guard, stabbed into her opponent's throat, and emerged through the nape of his neck.
She held the spear in one hand for a moment before wrenching it back, letting the commissioned warrior collapse to his knees and pitch forward onto his face. Twisting the spear shaft, she snapped the red tassel to spin away the drops of blood, and calmly planted the spear butt against the ground.
Chapter 439