Art is Explosion

"Yes! Brother Su!"

Though he didn't understand who this "Da Gu" was, Su Yun's words had thoroughly ignited Tang San.

He took a deep breath, his gaze becoming unprecedentedly resolute.

He even subconsciously mimicked Su Yun's earlier gesture, raising his right hand high, as if he truly held some transformative artifact in his grip.

"I'll prove it to you... the power of light!"

Tang San let out a low shout, his feet treading Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track, his form like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, charging straight toward the Golden Sun Crown Sunflower at the heart of the flower sea, a plant that seemed forged from red gold.

Yet, the moment Tang San stepped into the flower sea—

"Watch out!"

Su Yun's sunflower seed-cracking motion abruptly halted. He didn't even have time to spit out the shell, letting out a sharp cry instead.

That three-meter-tall Golden Sun Crown Sunflower seemed to sense the killing intent radiating from Tang San.

Its massive, red-gold flower disc shuddered violently. The petals that had been stretching toward the sun instantly contracted.

The golden flames at the edge of the flower disc surged, emitting a piercing shriek.

"Skree—!!!"

With that furious roar, the surrounding flower sea, once beautiful and romantic, instantly tore off its disguise!

"Puff! Puff! Puff!"

Soil flew, turf exploded!

Dozens of emerald-green plants, shaped like trumpets but with mouths as wide as bowls, burst from the ground. Their green cannon barrels swiveled in unison, locking onto the group.

Interspersed among them were several strange, ice-blue leaves radiating bone-chilling cold.

And at the very front, the ground heaved violently. Five or six metallic-lustered, giant nut-like objects broke through the earth, standing like iron walls before the group, sealing off Tang San's path forward.

"What... what kind of formation is this?!"

Red Hair, who had been ready to enjoy the show, nearly dropped his fire poker, his eyes bulging.

"Sunflowers turning into spirits is one thing, but even these weeds are doing it? Where's the martial honor?!"

Yu Xiaogang was dumbstruck. The notebook in his hands was crumpled and wrinkled, his mind thrown into massive cognitive chaos.

"Jade Marble Flower? Frost Breath Grass? And the Iron-Skin Nut, famed for its defense?!"

The Grandmaster's voice trembled as he pointed a shaking finger at the plants.

"Impossible! Plant-type soul beasts usually have strong territorial instincts, don't submit to one another, and lack complex social structures! How can these different species of plant soul beasts coordinate like an army? This completely violates soul beast ecology!"

"Puffpuffpuffpuffpuff!"

A dense barrage of breaking sounds suddenly rang out.

Countless emerald seeds, mixed with ice spheres, rained down on the group like a storm of pear blossoms!

"No good! Xiao San, fall back!" Yu Xiaogang shouted in terror.

But by now, Tang San had already charged to the front lines. The dense volley sealed off all his escape routes.

"This is the time for us to step in!"

At this critical moment, Red Hair bellowed.

He called to his brothers behind him: "Yellow Hair, Blue Hair, Green Hair! Form up! Meat shield charge!"

"Coming, big bro!"

These four bizarre brothers with their differently colored hair actually managed to form a passable charging formation.

"Charge! For the glory of our foster father!"

Three seconds later.

"Ow! My head!"

"Ow ow ow! Why do these beans hurt so much! I'm getting a concussion!"

"Stop! Stop! My legs are frozen! We're gonna shatter!"

The four-man group retreated faster than they had charged.

The seeds fired by the Jade Marble Flowers carried immense kinetic energy, clanging against the iron wok and shaking Yellow Hair's tiger's mouth until it split. The wok was beaten into a sieve.

The cold air spewed by the Frost Breath Grass was even more insidious, slowing all four of them considerably.

Worst off was Red Hair. He slammed headfirst into an Iron-Skin Nut, the recoil rattling him senseless. Before he could even get up, he was nearly swallowed whole by a Purple Demon Big-Mouth Flower that suddenly erupted from the ground behind him.

Tang San was forced to retreat, his form flitting like a ghost through the dense hail of projectiles as he flicked out a few Bone-Piercing Nails in a counterattack.

But what filled Tang San with despair was that his Bone-Piercing Nails, striking the Iron-Skin Nuts blocking the front line, only sparked a few flashes of light. They didn't even scratch the surface.

"Interesting."

Su Yun, who had remained motionless all this while, looked at the scene before him—one that felt oddly familiar—and casually tossed aside the sunflower seed shells in his hand.

"Since you all love playing positional warfare so much..."

Su Yun reached up to steady his sunglasses as the space behind him twisted faintly, the pure white Star Gate bursting open with a thunderous roar.

"Then let me teach you what modern warfare and firepower coverage really mean."

His fingertip tapped lightly against his brow, his voice cool and clear:

"First Soul Skill, Jixia Academy Gate."

Hum—

With Su Yun's words falling, the pure white Star Gate suddenly trembled violently, erupting with a dazzling, blinding radiance.

An anomaly struck!

On the crossbeam atop the gate frame, the originally still, exquisite Bai Ze relief suddenly seemed to be infused with a soul.

Its tightly shut stone eyes snapped open, shooting out two piercing beams of golden light, as if capable of seeing through all falsehood in the world.

Then, the Bai Ze relief raised its proud head, opened its mouth, and let out an ancient roar that was neither a lion's growl nor a dragon's cry.

"ROAR—!!!"

This roar brimmed with the majesty of an Auspicious Beast suppressing all realms, instantly drowning out the piercing alarm of the Golden Sun Crown Sunflower, plunging the chaotic battlefield into a moment of dead silence.

Every plant-type soul beast instinctively froze for an instant—the primal fear of lower lifeforms before a divine beast of higher order.

With the awakening of the Auspicious Beast and the tolling of the bell, the two-meter-tall pure white Star Gate burst wide open.

The scene beyond the gate was no longer the deep, vast cosmic nebula but instantly shifted into an independent, grand ancient world.

Amid rolling mist, towering, majestic ancient buildings loomed into view—lofty platforms, pavilions, and upturned eaves suspended in the void like a mirage, exuding a weightiness that had weathered millennia of change.

It was a supreme academy gathering the wisdom of a hundred schools of thought.

Jixia Academy.

A sound like the resonant chanting of ancient sages pierced the barriers of time and space, mingled with the echoes of the Great Dao, ringing clearly in everyone's ears, washing away the battlefield's bloodlust.

Then, at the outer edge of the academy gate, three blurry-faced scholar apparitions in coarse linen robes, surrounded by faint ink fragrance and righteous aura, slowly drifted out, hovering at Su Yun's side.

Though with Su Yun's current Soul Power, he could barely connect to the academy's outermost layer and summon only a few outer disciple apparitions, that was more than enough.

They hovered beside Su Yun like guardian spirits.

The one on the left sat cross-legged in midair, rapidly flipping through a bamboo scroll.

The one on the right held a writing brush, tracing invisible lines across the battlefield.

The one behind him closed his eyes in deep contemplation.

The moment the apparitions appeared, Su Yun felt his mind sharpen instantly.

Those scholar apparitions were his external brains.

Countless complex ballistic calculations, wind corrections, and weak-point analyses were all processed in an instant by these outer disciples, then transformed into pure combat instinct, flowing silently into Su Yun's heart.

No need to think—the answer was already there.

Su Yun slowly raised both hands, and in the next second, a black beast with a thick barrel appeared in his grip.

AA-12 automatic shotgun!

A close-quarters meat grinder!

"Too slow."

Under the blessing of the sage-like mental state, the world in Su Yun's eyes was nothing but black-and-white lines and red weak points.

The scholar apparition at his side lightly pointed a finger.

A coordinate instantly surfaced in Su Yun's mind.

Bang!

Su Yun pulled the trigger, and the AA-12's signature low roar rang out.

A massive muzzle flash erupted as a 12-gauge high-explosive armor-piercing round screamed forward.

It slammed straight into a giant ice sphere plummeting from midair.

Boom!

The bullet exploded on contact with the ice sphere!

High explosives mixed with steel pellets blasted the ice sphere apart midair, the shattered ice crystals spraying back like shrapnel, riddling the Frost Breath Grass beneath it like a sieve.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Su Yun began to step forward.

The AA-12 in his hands spat out an unbroken stream of fire, the devastating weapon steady as a mountain in his grip.

Every time the scholar apparition's brush swept through the air, Su Yun's gun barrel made a corresponding micro-adjustment.

No need to aim—instinct guided the bullets' path.

Straight ahead, an Iron-Skin Nut blocked his line of sight.

The corner of Su Yun's mouth lifted as his left hand slapped his waist, two round green objects appearing in his palm.

M67 Delayed Fragmentation Grenade.

Su Yun bit off the pull ring with his teeth.

The scholar's phantom beside him flipped through its bamboo slips, and a perfect red parabolic arc instantly took shape in Su Yun's mind, even calculating the grenade's rolling distance after landing and its detonation time.

Whoosh!

The two grenades traced a bizarre high-arcing trajectory, sailing over the top of the Nut Wall and landing with precision in the dense back ranks of those plants.

Boom—!!!

Two orange fireballs rose from the sea of flowers.

The massive shockwave, laced with shrapnel, instantly flipped that indestructible Nut Wall over from behind!

"W-What kind of weapon is that?!"

Red Hair, lying on the ground, watched with blood boiling. Just moments ago, he'd thought that iron wall was unbreakable, and now his adoptive father had blown it sky-high in the blink of an eye!

"Art! This is the art of explosion!"

The smoke and dust hadn't yet settled.

Su Yun, holding a gun in one hand, strode across the charred earth.

The scholar's phantom beside him still floated quietly, untouched by even a speck of dust.

He adjusted his sunglasses, his cold gaze piercing through layers of gunpowder smoke, locking onto the Golden Sun Crown Sunflower deep in the flower sea—its flower disc already blazing crimson as it trembled in fury.