"Dead!" shouted Ning Rong. "You can cut the line!"
That was right. To prevent Fierce Beasts from running off with the crossbow bolts, Yang Ning had also prepared barbed arrows attached to ropes that would expand upon hitting their target.
Just like that, the bed crossbow had turned into a harpoon gun.
As for the poison, who didn't know that the Fierce Beasts in the Demon Subduing Valley had high poison resistance? How could ordinary poison possibly be used?
A Black Wolf at the Sixth Level of Body Refinement could instantly burst forth with a speed of up to 140 meters per second at full force, almost equivalent to teleportation. With the arrows traveling at 258 meters per second, shooting from 200 meters away meant the chance of hitting it was very low.
Yet that wolf happened to stand on the most conspicuous rock and howl. As everyone knew, wolves always raised their heads when howling and didn't look at the tank below at all.
Caught completely off guard, it was hit.
"So that's what that barrel was used for!" Ming Yuxiu nodded. With his eyesight, he had naturally been able to capture the speed at which that arrow had just been fired. "Very clever conception!"
"Hmph, what's the use of it? If the Black Wolf King hadn't raised its head to howl, he definitely wouldn't have hit it!" said Lin Tianheng coldly. "It's completely useless against cultivators at the Sixth Body Refinement Realm, and even those at the fifth level can completely dodge it as long as they keep their guard up!"
"But he's only at the Second Level of Body Tempering. Being able to steadily threaten the Fourth Level of Body Refinement and injure an unprepared Sixth Level of Body Refinement—isn't that very impressive?" said Ming Yuxiu.
"Heretical paths, Unconventional Techniques!" said Lin Tianheng coldly. "This is simply a disgrace to cultivators!"
"But he's an Artifact Forging Master, and he can use artifact forging methods to overcome superior strength with inferior strength!" Li Yuan was displeased. "He might not be a genius among cultivators, but among the community of Artifact Forging Masters, he is definitely a genius—a once-in-a-thousand-years, no, a once-in-ten-thousand-years rare genius!"
"Hmm?" Lin Tianheng cast a cold glance his way.
Li Yuan wasn't cowed at all. It was wrong of him to look at Lin Tianheng's sister just now, but when it came to discussing the methods of Artifact Forging Masters, he was bold and confident!
"It just hit something a bit farther away. Now that so many black wolves are swarming around it, he can't use fire anymore. Let's see what he does now!" Lin Tianheng couldn't be bothered to argue with these people; he had already seen through Ming Yuxiu's goal.
But so what? That Yang Ning was a dead man!
"Brother." Lin Yuanxi at the side furrowed her brow. What was going on? She always felt like her brother was targeting Yang Ning!
Could he know about her situation? That was impossible!
"Oh!" Amid someone's exclamation of surprise, they saw that after those forty-odd black wolves rushed up, three giant swords suddenly popped out from the second tier of that fortress.
The next moment, the giant blades hummed as they spun around.
Not a single one of the black wolves that rushed up could withstand the cutting of the giant swords. These things were incomparably sharp; touch them and you died, graze them and you were wounded. The ones at a good angle were even sliced directly in two. After cutting down fifteen or sixteen of them this way, the remaining black wolves actually stood in their tracks and didn't dare to move!
They didn't move, but the fortress was mobile and charged straight at them.
The black wolves had no loyalty to speak of. Seeing that the wolf king was dead and so many companions had also died, they simply stopped charging and instead whimpered, tucking their tails between their legs and fleeing.
They didn't run away completely either, instead hanging behind the tank, wanting to wait until this tank grew exhausted before swarming it all at once.
Little did they know that the tank couldn't be bitten through even when it stopped. On the other hand, a few arrows would shoot out from inside the tank from time to time.
Unless these arrows hit a vital spot, the damage wasn't severe, but the arrows were all smeared with poison, meaning that getting hit meant certain death. In less than an afternoon's time, the wolf pack was hunted to the point where they didn't dare to pursue.
The tank didn't idle. After making sure all the scores were recorded, it changed locations to continue hunting beasts.
The remaining scenes became somewhat boring.
The swarming wolves couldn't breach the tank's defense and were continuously slaughtered. Whenever the wolf king lowered its guard even slightly, it was also sniped.
A lone black bear at the Fifth Level of Body Refinement had also tried to attack the tank, but a black bear capable of knocking over a giant tree was merely scratching an itch when it slammed into the tank.
It didn't know that it could reach the tank driver just by opening the cover on top. After being chased by the tank for half a day and taking fifteen arrows, it was finally poisoned to death!
The Crimson Python, hailed as the executioner of trial students, hid in the mud and was crushed to death after the tank rolled back and forth over it twice.
The Fire God Ant Swarm, hailed as the Black Death, was burned to a crisp along with their nest by fire oil, though it was a pity that burning bugs didn't award points.
The Golden Winged Eagle, hailed as the forbidden zone of the skies, pecked its beak to pieces yet still couldn't bite through the tank's outer shell, ultimately departing in frustration.
"This is a bit unbeatable!" said Ming Yuxiu. "There's simply nothing that can crack this fortress shell. As long as the shell can't be breached, the people inside could poison any kind of Fierce Beast to death just by shooting arrows, combined with the poison on them."
"Uh, pretty much!" replied Fang Zhuo. "The academy only bans buying weapons outside, but it doesn't ban buying medicine, because alchemy produces a lot of Pill Toxin. This stuff is bulky and cheap, and Yang Ning bought a lot of it, but who would have thought it would be used here?"
"Where was past Pill Toxin used?" asked Ming Yuxiu.
"It's all destroyed! Or buried centrally, and some of it is used to cultivate poisonous plants," said Fang Zhuo. "Ordinary people don't use this stuff when hunting either. After all, they're afraid the Fierce Beasts poisoned to death won't have the Pill Toxin cleaned out properly and will poison people!"
"This—" Ming Yuxiu blinked. He knew that items from the cultivator world basically never trickled down into the mortal realm, not even Pill Toxin. Furthermore, the Taiheng Sect prided itself on being an orthodox and upright sect; its disciples rarely used poison, and the academy didn't teach people how to use it either.
After all, the goal of teaching disciples in the school was advancement, to become immortals, and combat methods were also meant to invigorate vital energy.
Pill Toxin would ruin a person's foundation and was only ever used in external wars, but when would Taiheng ever need Body Refinement Realm cultivators to go to the battlefield?
This resulted in ordinary people who could fight with Pill Toxin being unable to obtain it, while cultivators had no use for it. Pill Toxin was completely useless trash in Seacloud City.
Yet today, this kind of trash was put to use by Xun Hu's group.
Ming Yuxiu suddenly discovered that Yang Ning wasn't just inventive—his train of thought was also remarkably eccentric!
No one had ever thought of using fire to burn the Cherry Blossom Ladybug before, and no one had ever thought of smearing poison on arrows to kill Fierce Beasts before either.
How did he come up with all of this?
Perhaps creations like the pulley bow and mobile fortress were also products born from this line of thinking?
He had to ask him when he came out!
The scene shifted, and just as the spectators were about to burst into fierce curses, they closed their mouths again.
Because what appeared in the scenes were corpses.
Since a trial was a trial, casualties were naturally bound to happen. The academy's promise of teachers keeping watch only applied to first-year students; second-year students were left to fend for themselves.
Yet in the footage, there were corpses of first-year students as well as second-year ones.
"This—" Ming Yunxiu frowned, looking at Fang Zhuo. "Is this what you meant by foolproof?"
"This—" Fang Zhuo's forehead broke out in sweat. "Allowing first-year students to join the trial is also something the academy is trying for the first time. Experience is lacking, and the deployed personnel are too few. I'll end the trial right now and have them withdraw!"
"Mn!" Ming Yunxiu nodded. He had been talking to Fang Zhuo, but his words were meant for Lin Tianheng.
The implication was clear: it wasn't that I wouldn't let you kill them, but as you just saw, that boatload of first-year students is already almost dead. Let's drop the rest!
Wang Yi frowned and looked toward Lin Tianheng.
Lin Tianheng wore a stern expression, his lips moving slightly, though no voice came through.
Wang Yi's eyes, however, lit up as she said, "Young Master Ming, wouldn't such a move be inappropriate? The Demon Subduing Valley trial is scheduled for three days, and it's only been a day and a half now. Ending it just like this doesn't conform to the regulations. How about this: why not just call out the first-year students?"
"That works too!" Ming Yunxiu nodded, though his expression turned serious.
He wasn't going to agree this simply. It seemed the real hard-fought battle was still to come!
The two of them settled the fate of several thousand students inside with a few words, while Fang Zhuo, the dean, had no say in the matter whatsoever. He could only issue a notification on the Identity Jade Token first, and then with a wave of his hand, thousands of portals opened, sending the remaining two thousand-odd first-year students tumbling out.
My job is finally over, and the rest is up to you people!
Before you continue