Ma Hongjun had no intention of testing his opponent. He went straight for his strongest killing move.
The first Yellow Soul Ring around his body suddenly blazed with light.
"First Soul Skill, Phoenix Fireline!"
Ma Hongjun drew a deep breath, and his already broad, heavily muscled chest and belly swelled up dramatically.
He looked just like a giant toad pumped full of air.
Then he opened his enormous mouth and spat forcefully forward.
Boom!
A scorching, dark-red flame as thick as an adult's thigh shot toward Gu Sheng like an armor-piercing arrow.
The flame was imbued with the berserk nature of Evil Fire.
Wherever it passed, the air twisted under the strain.
A series of piercing sizzling sounds rang out as it scorched the air.
The hard bluestone slabs on the ground were plowed into a deep, charred trench under the searing heat of the fireline.
Rubble flew everywhere, and the spectacle was horrifying.
Faced with this ferocious attack, powerful enough to burn an ordinary person to ashes in an instant,
Gu Sheng reacted in a way that took everyone present by surprise.
He didn't even raise an eyelid.
There wasn't even a hint of panic in his eyes.
His black robe fluttered in the hot wind raised by the flames.
Gu Sheng remained standing calmly where he was.
His hands were clasped behind his back.
He didn't move even half an inch.
He neither dodged nor tried to defend himself with a Martial Soul or Soul Skill.
He looked as though he had been scared witless by the terrifying spectacle.
A deafening wave of cries instantly burst from the crowd.
"It's over! That kid is absolutely finished!"
"Why isn't he dodging? Is he too scared to move?"
"Oh no, there won't even be a whole bone left!"
Many timid civilians squeezed their eyes shut in fright, unable to bear watching the tragedy about to unfold.
Everyone had already sentenced Gu Sheng to death in their minds.
After all, the twenty-level gap in Soul Power was plain to see. Taking a Soul Elder's full-force attack head-on could only end one way: death.
Some of the young people who had been fired up by Gu Sheng stepping forward were now drenched in cold sweat, shaken with fear.
They were incredibly relieved they hadn't impulsively stepped forward themselves.
Otherwise, they would be the ones standing there waiting to die, about to become charred corpses.
The smug smile on Yu Xiaogang's face grew wider.
He had already prepared the opening remarks he was about to deliver.
But Qian Renxue, standing at the edge of the crowd, looked remarkably calm.
Her bright eyes stayed fixed on Gu Sheng's back without blinking.
She showed no trace of worry or panic.
Against Gu Sheng's unfathomable power, a flame of this level wasn't even worth a joke.
The Phoenix Fireline, wreathed in an aura of destruction, moved incredibly fast.
In the blink of an eye, it had reached the space right in front of Gu Sheng's face.
Just as the flames were about to hit Gu Sheng, in that fleeting instant,
another bizarre scene unfolded without warning.
Before everyone's eyes,
Gu Sheng's solid, upright figure suddenly turned illusory.
Like a reflection on a placid lake disturbed by a pebble, ripples spread across it in widening circles.
His whole body took on a strange, transparent appearance.
Then,
the scorching, berserk dark-red flame struck Gu Sheng's "body" without meeting any resistance.
There was no foul smell of burning flesh,
nor the sound of Soul Power colliding against any resistance.
The fireline, hot enough to melt steel, simply passed straight through Gu Sheng's now-transparent body.
It was as though it had passed through a mass of air with no physical substance.
After passing through Gu Sheng,
the fireline's force remained undiminished as it slammed into the open ground far behind him.
"Rumble!"
A deafening boom shook the air.
The stone slabs on the ground were instantly blasted to pieces.
A large amount of earth and charred rubble was flung into the air by the berserk energy.
A huge crater half a meter deep was left in the ground.
The bottom of the crater was pitch-black, and pungent black smoke continued to billow from it.
The entire street
fell into deathly silence.
Everyone around them was so stunned by the bizarre scene that they couldn't utter a word.
Some rubbed their eyes furiously, convinced they were seeing a ghost in broad daylight.
Others swallowed hard, their throats making a dry rasp.
"W-what's going on?"
"The fireline clearly hit him! How did it pass right through his body?"
"What kind of monster is he?"
Fear spread through the crowd like a plague.
They couldn't make sense of what they were seeing.
Yu Xiaogang's arms, which had been folded across his chest, dropped limply to his sides.
He stared, eyes wide as bells, at the transparent figure still standing there unharmed.
He had pored over the secret manuals of countless great sects and prided himself on understanding the deepest truths of Martial Souls across Douluo Continent.
Yet not a single one of his theoretical notes had ever so much as mentioned a situation like this.
This phenomenon completely defied common sense in the Soul Master World, leaving Yu Xiaogang dizzy.
"This can't be... No Martial Soul or Soul Skill could possibly do this!"
Seeing the dramatic reversal, Qian Renxue smiled, her beauty as radiant as a spring flower in bloom.
A relieved smile, as though she had known this would happen, appeared on her face.
"You bunch of clowns think you can hurt him?"
"You really don't know the height of the heavens or the depth of the earth."
By comparison, Ma Hongjun, the one who had launched the attack, was the most shaken of all.
He had watched helplessly as his most trusted signature move was evaded in a way he couldn't understand.
His intense sense of defeat instantly turned into an even more furious blaze of anger that rushed to his head.
Ma Hongjun felt humiliated.
"You bastard, you dare make a fool of me!"
Ma Hongjun flew into a rage.
He recklessly drove his Soul Power into a frenzy.
The three Soul Rings shone in unison, their brightness reaching its peak.
The Evil Fire Phoenix phantom behind him grew more solid and let out a shrill screech.
Ma Hongjun swung both hands in succession and attacked again with ruthless force.
This time, he held nothing back.
He forcibly increased the attack's power and density several times over.
Dozens of dark-red firelines, even thicker and hotter than before, shot out from different angles.
They wove together into an impenetrable web of deathly flames.
Every escape route around Gu Sheng was sealed off.
"Let's see if you can turn into air this time!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Deafening explosions erupted in rapid succession where Gu Sheng stood.
The raging flames ran wild, instantly swallowing that patch of space whole.
The immense force of the blasts kicked up a thick cloud of dust.
It blotted out the sky, completely hiding Gu Sheng from view.
The civilians nearby had long since fled far away in terror.
No one dared approach this sea of flames, which looked like a scene straight out of purgatory.
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