The moment he said that, the entire area fell silent!
Li Xuanbing, Jin Changpu, and the others went pale. They looked at Xu Feng as if he were a madman!
He dared to speak to the president like that?
And he wanted to challenge the president?!
Bai Luhao was also taken aback at first, seemingly not expecting that response.
But then he looked at Xu Feng's eyes through the pale red keratin eye lenses. Though calm, they burned with an unyielding fire.
A long-forgotten mix of fury at having his authority challenged and the excitement of finally meeting a worthy opponent surged through him!
"Hahahahaha—!!!"
Bai Luhao threw back his head and let out a deafening laugh, wild and unrestrained!
"Good! Good! Good! You've got guts! I like your kind—full of thorns!"
He abruptly stopped laughing and fixed Xu Feng with his tiger eyes, fighting spirit blazing in his gaze.
"Then you'll get your wish! Let's see just how much you've got beneath that shell!"
With that, he waved at Li Xuanbing and the others.
Li Xuanbing and the others immediately understood. Though they were still shocked by Xu Feng's audacity, they obeyed their president without hesitation.
They swiftly adjusted their magic.
The light from Li Xuanbing's staff flared. The thick ice walls surrounding the area didn't come down; instead, they rapidly expanded outward and upward!
The ice grew thicker, and the walls continued to rise, forming a gigantic inverted bowl that enclosed an even wider area.
Jin Changpu manipulated the sand and stones on the ground, sending them flowing away in every direction like a living tide. He cleared away all the rubble and obstacles in the center of the area inside the ice walls, then packed the ground down.
A huge, flat, solid circular arena took shape, with a radius of nearly a kilometer!
The Quicksand Hands didn't disappear, of course. They remained around the arena's outer edge as a second line of defense.
The rain of metal needles controlled by Piao Changfan and the other team members withdrew to the edges of the ice walls, standing ready.
They were there both to prevent Xu Feng from escaping and to serve as spectators—and witnesses—to the imminent showdown between an S-Class Hunter and a mysterious A-Class rogue.
In the blink of an eye, a vast arena with walls of solid ice and a sandy-stone floor had taken shape at the heart of the Lava Grotto!
Blazing heat and freezing cold, ferocity and stillness—a bizarre and breathtaking scene unfolded.
"Come on!"
To everyone's surprise, Bai Luhao deliberately reined in some of his ferocious aura. The white fur that had been growing wildly across his body slowly receded, and his fearsome half-beast form faded, returning him to his usual hulking, tower-like human shape.
He casually slipped one hand into his tactical pants pocket and beckoned Xu Feng with the other. A wildly confident smile played across his face.
"I'll let you make the first move. I'll finish you in ten."
"Sure, sure, sure!"
Looking at the man's smug, crooked-mouth-dragon-king act, Xu Feng's lips twitched. He nearly laughed in disbelief.
"Are all S-Class Hunters this full of themselves?"
He could joke about it, but Xu Feng was more wary than ever.
Bai Luhao wouldn't be so arrogant unless he was either stupid or absolutely certain of victory.
Clearly, Bai Luhao was the latter.
Without wasting another word, Xu Feng's thoughts raced, and the qi and blood within him erupted like a river bursting its banks!
An even denser blood-red mist billowed from the surface of his dark crimson armor, making him look like a fiend striding out of a sea of blood. He had reached the peak of what he could sustain in Blood Dragon State!
"Hey, how many hits do you think the Wind Hidden One can take from the boss?"
At the perimeter of the ice wall, a B-class assassin holding a pair of blades whispered to his companion.
"Hard to say. With that kind of aura, he's clearly got something going for him. Maybe he'll make the boss use twenty or thirty percent of his strength?" The companion curled his lip, unconvinced. "But the boss is obviously playing cat and mouse, seeing what this guy can do. And, well... he probably wants to knock him down a peg before recruiting him."
"Yeah. He's just some A-class guy hiding his face. How strong can he be? The president is a mid-tier S-Class!"
The team members around them murmured among themselves. Most looked at Xu Feng with curiosity, scrutiny, and utter confidence.
They had followed Bai Luhao for a long time and knew how terrifyingly strong their president was. They didn't believe this mysterious "Wind Hidden One" could make any waves.
Just then, Xu Feng moved!
He drove both feet into the ground!
BOOM—!!!
Like a meteor striking!
The arena floor, reinforced again and again by Jin Changpu's earth-element magic until it was as hard as an alloy, exploded from the spot where Xu Feng had planted his feet. A web-shaped crater several meters across opened beneath him!
Stones shot in every direction like bullets, clattering against the ice walls.
Xu Feng himself surged forward on that terrifying recoil, becoming a dark red streak of lightning that tore through the air. He shot straight at Bai Luhao, dozens of meters away, at a horrifying speed that broke the sound barrier!
He was so fast that a string of vivid crimson afterimages trailed behind him!
"Oh?"
Admiration deepened in Bai Luhao's eyes. He still didn't take his hand out of his pocket; he merely lowered his body slightly, ready to meet the charge.
In the blink of an eye, Xu Feng was upon him!
His right foot gouged into the ground like an iron plow, forcing his momentum to a halt. The tremendous inertia made the ground split apart once more!
At the same time, he pivoted on his left foot and whipped his body sideways like a rapidly spinning top, perfectly combining his momentum with the force of rotation!
In his dantian, his surging qi and blood raced toward his right shoulder like an army answering the call to charge.
The dark crimson armor over his right shoulder visibly grew thicker, its edges sharply defined. A scorching golden-red glow even seemed to shine from within!
The air warped and blurred under the heat of the densely concentrated, violent energy, hissing as it burned!
"Blood Martial Art: Iron Mountain Lean!"
A low, thunderous roar erupted from beneath his armor!
Xu Feng pitched forward like a giant siege crossbow released at full draw!
His right shoulder, packed with the full force of his qi and blood, slammed into Bai Luhao's seemingly unguarded chest with the power to shatter mountains and split the earth!
The strike was simple and brutal, yet it brought the force, speed, and concentration of his qi and blood to the very limit of his current Blood Dragon State!
It had enough power to smash a small mountain to pieces!
Bai Luhao's golden tiger eyes narrowed slightly at the ferocious head-on charge. Even he seemed a little surprised by the sheer force behind it.
But he still didn't dodge. He didn't even take his left hand out of his pocket.
He merely raised his idle right hand, fingers spread and palm facing forward, and casually held it before his chest to meet Xu Feng's Iron Mountain Lean, which struck like a meteor!
THOOM—!!!!!!!!!
The instant they connected—
A terrifying explosion, at once deafening and so deep it seemed to shake the earth, erupted like ten thousand tons of TNT detonating in an enclosed space!
A visible ring of force burst outward from the two of them!
RUMBLE—!!!
Wherever the shock wave passed, the arena floor—reinforced layer upon layer with magic—seemed to be wrenched upward by an invisible giant hand!
The meters-thick, rock-hard earth rolled like waves, shattered, and flew into the air!
Countless boulders slammed into the towering ice walls like cannonballs. The impacts crashed one after another, ice fragments flew everywhere, and the entire enclosure shuddered violently as fine cracks spread across its surface!
"What?!"
"That kind of force?!"
"How did he unleash it so quickly?!"
The hunters around the ice wall went pale and cried out in shock!
They knew they could unleash attacks with that much power themselves, but it would take a long incantation, a buildup of energy, or powerful magical equipment.
To build up such terrifying force in an instant while moving at high speed, then release all that destructive power in a single concentrated strike...
They had to admit that none of them could control and unleash power like that!
Everyone stared at the center of the explosion.
Dust and rubble slowly settled.
The two figures had separated and now stood more than ten meters apart.
Bai Luhao still had one hand in his pocket. He lowered his outstretched right hand and shook his wrist, wearing the same teasing smile as before, as if he'd merely swatted a fly away.
Not a speck of dust marked him. Even the hem of his clothes remained undisturbed.
Xu Feng stood firm, his right shoulder armor slightly dimmer but otherwise intact.
But beneath his armored mask, his crimson eyes were now filled with more gravity than ever before.
That Iron Mountain Lean had been an all-out strike, the peak expression of his strength and concentrated qi and blood in Blood Dragon State!
Yet Bai Luhao had caught it with one hand as if it were nothing!
Xu Feng could even feel the concentrated golden Qi energy in Bai Luhao's palm. It had not only canceled out his charge completely; the force rebounding from it had made his qi and blood churn slightly!
"Had enough yet?"
Bai Luhao tilted his head and asked casually.
Xu Feng didn't answer, but a storm raged inside him.
"The gap between A-class and S-class... is this huge?"
He quickly ran the numbers.
"If the difference in strength from D-Rank to C-Rank, and from C-Rank to B-class, is about threefold, then the gap between A-class and S-class... is probably five times as large, or even more! And this is just Bai Luhao in his normal state!"
To stand against him, Xu Feng would have to use that form.
The thought flashed through Xu Feng's mind, but he immediately dismissed it.
Bai Luhao was still in his ordinary human form. He hadn't even transformed into a half-beast.
Even if Xu Feng used his trump card, at best he could contend with Bai Luhao in human form for a while. Winning—or escaping—would be next to impossible.
And there were still all those A-class and B-class Hunters surrounding him, watching like a pack of tigers.
"Looks like... I'll have to play dirty."
Xu Feng's gaze passed almost imperceptibly over the layers of ice walls and quicksand barriers around him. A daring plan quickly took shape in his mind.
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