At that moment, Yan Chihuo came charging over the air, stepping on several enormous boulders as he ran. He brought his sword down in a vicious slash. He knew that if he stayed on the ground, his opponent could use Imprisoning Earth to leave him at his mercy, so he had risked attacking from above.
Zhong Yun felt the ground beneath his feet turn soft. He knew his opponent had used Imprisoning Earth, but neither dodged nor retreated. He leveled his giant axe upward just as a mass of boulders came crashing down from the sky—Yan Chihuo had cast Falling Rock Art!
Zhong Yun let out a roar, and a mass of boulders surged up from the ground to meet them head-on. His Falling Rock Art could actually be cast against the current!
The two heaps of boulders collided. One was backed by deep reserves of magic power, the other by momentum from above, and neither gained the upper hand. With a deafening crash, rocks flew everywhere. Then Yan Chihuo and Zhong Yun shot out from the rubble.
Yan Chihuo watched Zhong Yun from a distance and said, "Senior Brother Zhong, thank you for going easy on me and letting me barely last through that stick of incense. If it had gone on a little longer, I wouldn't have been able to hold out."
Zhong Yun paused, then looked back. The stick of incense planted in the ground had burned down completely. He put away his giant axe and said, "You're too kind, Junior Brother Yan. You truly deserve your reputation as the expert who slew the Heavenly Evil Blood Demon."
Yan Chihuo clasped his hands and turned to leave. Hong Lie felt humiliated and muttered bitterly, "Yan Chihuo sure got lucky."
Zhong Yun turned to Hong Lie. "Do you really think Yan Chihuo was just lucky?"
Zhan Qing came over as well. "Actually, Yan Chihuo's mastery of earth-element spells is quite ordinary. He's nowhere near Senior Brother Zhong's level—and not much better than mine, either."
Zhong Yun shook his head. "Junior Brother Zhan, I may not match you at crafting artifacts, but when it comes to cultivation, I have a bit more experience than you."
Zhan Qing forced a smile. "We're all brothers here, Senior Brother Zhong. Say whatever you think."
"As you said, his cultivation and mastery of spells aren't much better than yours. He may even be worse. But he has extremely rich experience in combat. He always uses the right spell at the right moment. Just that alone means, Junior Brother Zhan, if you fought him, you'd lose within ten breaths—and might even lose your life."
Zhan Qing was a little unconvinced. But then he remembered that he had indeed lost to Yan Chihuo in fewer than ten breaths, and said, "Still, he was in a sorry state fighting you, Senior Brother Zhong. Just as he said, if it had gone on a little longer, he surely wouldn't have been able to hold out."
Zhong Yun shook his head. "I had the upper hand, but completely defeating him wouldn't have been easy. If we fought to the death, I'd only give myself a sixty or seventy percent chance of winning. I can't say victory is certain. Besides, he hasn't been cultivating for long and doesn't have many talisman artifacts. Give him a little more time to reach the Body Forging Late Stage or acquire a few more talisman artifacts, and the outcome will be even harder to predict."
Hong Lie said, "I wonder what he did before joining the sect. Did he really spend every waking moment fighting people?"
"I heard that before joining the sect, he was a famous assassin in the martial world," Zhan Qing said. "He didn't know any spells, but he was always walking the line between life and death, so he was exceptionally quick to adapt when facing an enemy."
Zhong Yun mused, "That explanation just about makes sense. But if he didn't know spells before, how did he learn to judge the perfect moment to cast them so well? And if he did know spells before becoming an assassin, how could he have spent so much time walking the line between life and death? His ability to adapt in combat shouldn't have become so exceptional, either."
Leaving the three of them to discuss him behind his back, Yan Chihuo returned to his cave abode. First, he took out the Soul-Breaking Sword and examined it closely, then set it aside and pulled the Snake Scale from his robes. The Restriction on the scale was nearly complete, but Yan Chihuo knew very well that at first he had only had a vague understanding of artifact crafting and had carved haphazardly, going down the wrong path. Even if he somehow managed to finish it later, the Restriction would never exceed ten layers.
He extended his left hand. A wisp of black energy appeared, and he gently brushed it over the Snake Scale. The Forbidden Cloud Pattern vanished at once. This method of cleansing a Restriction was completely different from what Wu Yunhe had taught him. According to Wu Yunhe, it had to be done in an artifact-forging furnace using a specific method.
Wu Yunhe had indeed passed that technique on to him, but how could Yan Chihuo get his hands on an artifact-forging furnace? It wasn't something he could buy for a hundred or two hundred Jade Crystals. He could only think of this method: use Poison Dissolving Art to wash away the Restriction.
But no one had ever tried this method before, and Yan Chihuo couldn't guarantee it would work. Even if he could wash away the Restriction, he worried that it might damage the Talisman Artifact Primordial Embryo. So he decided to test it on this Snake Scale.
The effect of using Poison Dissolving Art to wash away the Forbidden Cloud Pattern was even better than he had imagined. And he had been so careful that he hadn't caused the slightest damage to the Snake Scale.
He looked over the Snake Scale. Under normal artifact-crafting methods, he should purify it first, but that too required an artifact-forging furnace. Yan Chihuo thought, This Snake Scale isn't particularly precious, anyway. That snake demon was just an ordinary poisonous snake that had cultivated into a demon, not some rare creature born of heaven and earth. If it isn't purified, the talisman artifact's potential will be limited, but that doesn't mean it can't be crafted. I might as well use it to practice.
With that thought, he silently recited the incantation and extended his right index finger, swiftly drawing several cloud patterns across the Snake Scale. His technique was exceedingly intricate, yet not the slightest bit disorderly. If Wu Yunhe had seen him then, he would have been astonished: Yan Chihuo's technique was a full three parts more refined than anything Wu Yunhe usually displayed.
Cloud patterns flowed beneath Yan Chihuo's fingertip, one after another, and in just a moment he had carved the first layer of the Restriction. But his hand did not stop. It was as if clouds flowed beneath his finger as he carved a full fifteen layers of Restrictions before finally pausing.
Yan Chihuo looked at the Snake Scale in his hand, quite pleased. As he had carved the Restrictions, he had entered a state of utter self-forgetfulness. Such a state was exceedingly rare for an artifact crafter. It not only made the Restrictions more precise and true to their fundamental nature, but also greatly improved the crafter's skill.
Yet Yan Chihuo felt a little regretful. Though entering this state greatly improved his skill at carving Restrictions, it was absolutely impossible to reach that level again without entering the same state—unless his skill improved by another great leap. The Snake Scale's quality was truly ordinary; carving Restrictions of this caliber on it seemed like a waste.
The Restriction he had carved onto the Snake Scale was Earth Shrinking Step. Yan Chihuo had long yearned to learn this spell, but his cultivation was insufficient. Though he had memorized the incantation until he could recite it backward, he had never formally cast it.
He silently recited the incantation and sent a surge of magic power into the Snake Scale. His feet shifted with it, and in a flash he appeared beside the wall, nearly crashing into it. He hurriedly caught himself with one hand.
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