Spirit Realm

Du Xiangyang realized that he had misjudged Qin Lie’s abilities. However, instead of being surprised, he was overjoyed and even grew a little excited.

Five of the fifteen sword tokens that had been forged by Heavenly Sword Mountain were given to Qin Lie and the others. The remaining ten were held by Heavenly Sword Mountain martial practitioners.

Prior to the exploration of a secret realm, the nine great Silver rank forces would often choose a core individual from among the group to be the leader.

Once the leader was chosen, the selection of the remaining martial practitioners would then revolve around the leader so that it would be convenient for the leader to manage the group.

For example, once Heavenly Sword Mountain had confirmed Luo Chen as their ringer, they immediately made him the leader, then chose Li Rong and seven other martial practitioners who were blindly loyal to him.

This was done to make things convenient for Luo Chen so he could gather the strength to go up against the ringers of the other Silver rank forces and obtain the final victory during the Trial.

The selection of the leader was often an intense competition. Du Xiangyang and another Heavenly Sword Mountain female disciple called He Wei both competed against Luo Chen for the position.

In the end, both Du Xiangyang and He Wei lost terribly.

That was also why Heavenly Sword Mountain arranged for seven martial practitioners who were close to Luo Chen to participate in the Trial. Those seven had even been handpicked by Luo Chen himself.

This greatly enhanced Luo Chen’s power.

If Du Xiangyang had won against Luo Chen during the competition, he would have been able to choose his own friendly group of martial practitioners and enter the secret realm with a powerful force.

Both he and He Wei were unwilling to withdraw from the Trial despite losing horribly to Luo Chen. They ultimately had to enter alone.

He naturally did not think well of Luo Chen.

As for Qin Lie, Luo Chen had planned to get rid of him as soon as possible. Worse still, Qin Lie held a Heavenly Sword Mountain sword token. If Qin Lie really was pathetically weak, then Du Xiangyang wouldn’t mind killing him early on so he could save Heavenly Sword Mountain from future embarrassment.

However, if Qin Lie were strong and could potentially cause trouble for Luo Chen, that would definitely be a wonderful thing for Du Xiangyang.

“Whoosh!”

A bright, colorful skyfire shot toward the area that Qin Lie and Du Xiangyang were in like a comet, leaving a long tail of fire behind it.

Flames that contained a shocking amount of fire energy continuously fell from the burning sky.

Even someone like Du Xiangyang who cultivated a fire spirit art looked at the descending flames in fear.

If no external force interfered with these descending flames, they would land between Qin Lie and Du Xiangyang. In fact, they might even land closer to Qin Lie.

Qin Lie was calm, and his eyes shone with a bizarre color.

The thunder aura around his body withdrew. A vast earth aura that was unwaveringly oppressive rippled out of his body.

The surrounding gravity fields instantly changed!

Due to the gravity’s influence, the blazing flames fell even faster than before.

In that moment, the bizarre change in the gravity field made the dazzling flames in the air shift course at an incredibly odd angle.

It was only a slight distortion, but the supernatural flames immediately changed direction...

...falling toward Du Xiangyang even faster.

A terrifying wave of heat capable of roasting thousands of beings alive—a sea of flames that looked as if it could envelop heaven and earth—swarmed toward Du Xiangyang.

The sight struck terror into Du Xiangyang.

“The work of a devil!”

Du Xiangyang screamed. Holding a burning sword in his hand, he transformed into a fiery sword beam, and shot away from his earlier position.

“Boom!”

The skyfire fell from the sky and crashed in that very spot, and several hundred bolts of flame scattered throughout the surroundings.

“Prak!”

The fiery rocks in the area exploded into smithereens, resulting in the appearance of two Heavenly Flame Crystals.

Qin Lie’s eyes lit up. With an odd chuckle, he flew out, prevented the two Heavenly Flame Crystals from falling into the lava pond, and threw them into his spatial ring.

Once he got the Heavenly Flame Crystals, lightning shone from his eyes as he looked at Du Xiangyang once more.

“Rrrmb!”

Amidst the dull rumbling, two head-sized Thunder Lightning Balls howled toward Du Xiangyang like two brilliant suns.

Cursing non-stop, Du Xiangyang had barely escaped from the descending flames when he suddenly discovered that two Thunder Lightning Balls were shooting toward him.

Meanwhile, after unleashing the Thunder Lightning Balls, Qin Lie charged across the giant rocks toward Du Xiangyang.

“Dammit!”

Du Xiangyang swore, spinning the Scarlet Fire Sword in his hands to use a sword art and summon clusters of fire.

The tip of the Scarlet Fire Sword shot a narrow, needle-like beam of fire into the surroundings.

He used the momentum of that beam to fly backward.

With the flames concealing his figure, Du Xiangyang was able to escape from where he had originally been. The beam of fire seemed to have a mind of its own, avoiding the Thunder Lightning Balls and piercing toward Qin Lie.

“Boom boom!”

The two Thunder Lightning Balls smashed into where Du Xiangyang had been, scattering fire everywhere.

Qin Lie suddenly experienced an acute feeling of discomfort.

A multicolored beam that resembled a burning needle had locked onto his forehead, flying straight toward it.

He felt as if his True Soul was being burned to dust, and the harsh sword aura contained within the rainbow beam made every hair on his body stand on end.

“Frost Shield!”

Qin Lie immediately stopped chasing Du Xiangyang and pressed his palms together. Cold mist began to shroud his palms.

“Krak krak krak!”

A thick, translucent shield of ice instantly formed in front of his palms.

“Ssss!”

The fire beam struck the shield, creating a shrill noise.

In response, the shield of ice began to swiftly melt!

The beam of fire resembled a pangolin, swiftly penetrating Qin Lie’s ice shield and travelling toward his forehead.

Such a sight shocked Qin Lie.

Since the ice shield was about to melt completely, and seeing as he had no viable plan in mind, Qin Lie could only dodge using Blood Escape like how Du Xiangyang had avoided his Thunder Lightning Balls.

The refined blood energy inside of Qin Lie’s blood instantly exploded forth.

He escaped in a burst of bloody light, appearing over a dozen kilometers away.

“Pfft!”

Qin Lie spat out a mouthful of blood. His face paled slightly, and he wore an ugly expression on his face.

He currently stood beside a pond of liquid fire more than a dozen kilometers away from the battlefield. The pond burned with terrifying flames, and its bubbling surface radiated a frightening amount of heat.

He could clearly feel that he had used up a great deal of blood energy.

Blood Escape required the activation of the energy inside one’s blood and instantaneous power. Upon unleashing this skill, a portion of the practitioner’s blood would evaporate, leaving them weak for a short period of time. This was actually a bloody art that damaged the practitioner that used it.

Qin Lie sat cross legged and took out the spirit stones from before, absorbing spirit energy from them and recovering as he did earlier.

The sword token around his waist no longer emitted a low, ringing tone. This meant that Du Xiangyang had stopped searching for him, or chose not to immediately chase after him.

“I can’t believe that sword beam was so fierce and terrifying. If I had known about that, I would not have tried to take it head on. I should have just escaped,” Qin Lie said with a grim expression. He realized that he had underestimated Du Xiangyang. He hadn’t thought that he would be so powerful.

What Qin Lie didn’t know was that Du Xiangyang was even more shocked and upset than he was.

Several kilometers away.

Halfway up a volcano, Du Xiangyang constantly swore. “Dammit! He’s crazy! What a madman!”

After testing Qin Lie’s true strength, Du Xiangyang had been ready to stop there to talk to Qin Lie about the possibility of joining forces against Luo Chen.

He had already been prepared to show Qin Lie goodwill...

However, he hadn’t thought that Qin Lie would forcefully alter the trajectory of the descending flames with a strange gravity field and throw them at him just as he was about to propose a truce.

After fleeing from the fiery meteors that fell from the sky, two Thunder Lightning Balls shot toward where he stood before he was able to utter a single word. After shooting the Thunder Lightning Balls, Qin Lie himself had charged toward him.

The man actually hadn’t given him a single moment to breathe.

Left with no other choice, Du Xiangyang could only use his true strength and form a “Burning Soul Firebeam” with his spirit energy and soul consciousness to stop Qin Lie’s mad charge.

Burning Soul Firebeam was one of Du Xiangyang’s ultimate techniques. It was a powerful attack created by combining a large amount of refined spirit energy and imbuing it with soul consciousness.

It took a lot out of him to create a Burning Soul Firebeam, so he definitely regretted doing so.

However, just before the Burning Soul Fire Beam could pierce Qin Lie, he vanished.

Du Xiangyang had been busy dodging an attack, so he had not noticed how Qin Lie managed to escape. When he realized this and checked his sword token, Qin Lie had already escaped more than a dozen kilometers away.

“Dammit! I really screwed myself over this time. I didn’t think that this guy from the Scarlet Tide Continent would be so ruthless and powerful,” Du Xiangyang said, panting. His expression continuously changed as he touched his sword token.

A long time later, he decided to give up on searching for Qin Lie and instead prepared to recover his strength with spirit stones.

He did this to avoid martial practitioners of other forces from finding him and taking him out due to his exhaustion.

“Looks like this Qin Lie fellow can cause a bit of trouble for Luo Chen,” Du Xiangyang thought.

After testing each other’s strength, Qin Lie and Du Xiangyang took time to recover. In this time, a group of four young martial practitioners with “Xiahou” sewn to the shoulder area of their clothing were also operating near the fiery volcanos.

“Brother Yuan, this is a sword token that we got by killing a Heavenly Sword Mountain martial practitioner.” Xiahou Shang took out a sword token and passed it to his leader. “The Xiahou Family’s luck is good. We did not end up far from each other. Since we gathered together so quickly, we must use this advantage and kill as many people as possible! Otherwise, when the other martial practitioners have gathered into groups, it will be very difficult for us to kill anyone.”

Xiahou Yuan was tall and stalwart. He had a shiny bald head and he wore a black martial practitioner uniform with golden fringes. His face was plain, but his eyes glittered with a brutal light.

“Go see if there are any Heavenly Sword Mountain martial practitioners nearby. Kill them all as long as none of them are Luo Chen!”

Xiahou Yuan nodded repeatedly and probed the sword token with his soul consciousness.

After a while, he shook his head in disappointment. “No one is nearby.”

“Widen the area and keep searching. We must take advantage of this sword token!” Xiahou Yuan commanded.

Their group of people began to move in a certain direction.

Four hours later, when Xiahou Yuan made another attempt to search the area with the sword token, he exclaimed with an excited expression, “There’s a reaction! We found two Heavenly Sword Mountain martial practitioners!”

“Then let’s go and kill them!” Xiahou Yuan laughed wickedly.