Gu Rong saw this.
The two ghostly lights in his eyes grew brighter.
"The old man came here today for only one reason."
His voice was low to the extreme, each word seeming to have been dug out from the depths of his chest.
"To let you know that our Rongrong is not someone you, or whatever force stands behind you, can casually set your sights on."
One step. He took a step forward. His aura rose another threefold.
"Our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect is not something you, or whatever force stands behind you, can casually scheme against either."
Another step. The gale in the main hall grew fiercer, the lamps went out, and everything fell into complete darkness, leaving only the interwoven glow of two sets of nine Soul Rings.
"Come."
Gu Rong's voice dragged out that grating final syllable.
"Let this old man see what you're capable of."
In his dragon eyes was reflected Yang Xing's face, illuminated by the Soul Rings and still bearing lipstick marks.
"If you're nothing but an empty shell—"
His hoarse voice echoed through the darkness.
"—then tonight, you'll only end up beaten to death by this old man."
He paused.
"Or else—"
The corners of Gu Rong's mouth split into a grin. Combined with his deeply sunken eye sockets, that smile looked ten times more terrifying than any ghost or demon beneath the Soul Ring light.
"—show this old man strength enough to kill me. Then you can be Rongrong's master, and we'll accept every scheme you have against our Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect!"
As his words fell—
The two auras confronted each other in the main hall. Gu Rong's side was violent as a tidal wave, while Yang Xing's was silent as an abyss.
At the heart of that clashing storm, Yang Xing finished the last sip of tea.
He gently set the cup on the nearby table, which had been pushed crooked by the shockwaves but had not yet overturned. The soft clink was faint, yet exceptionally clear amid the howling wind filling the room.
"As you should." Yang Xing nodded.
Gu Rong's brow furrowed slightly.
"However." Yang Xing raised a hand and pointed around them, his tone full of regret. "This is the first decent place I've managed to live in after all these years. The Barak City Lord arranged it for me."
He stood and dusted off the back of his sleeping robe.
"I'd hate to see it wrecked. Let's change locations."
Gu Rong said nothing.
Yang Xing's gaze left the walls and settled on Gu Rong.
The two exchanged a glance.
Just one glance.
Then Gu Rong's world turned upside down.
There was no transition. No warning. Not even the slightest detectable energy fluctuation.
Heaven and earth flipped before his eyes.
Black became white. Above became below. The shattered main hall, the extinguished oil lamp, the splinters floating in the air—all vanished in an instant.
In their place was wind.
A shrieking gale at high altitude, flooding his ears and nearly tearing him apart.
Gu Rong's pupils suddenly contracted to their limit.
He looked down.
Beneath his feet was empty space.
Further below lay the vast, curved land a thousand meters beneath him. Suotuo City looked like a chessboard no larger than his thumb, while the forests and rivers beyond it resembled thin lines drawn by a brush.
He was a thousand meters in the air.
When had he reached a thousand meters in the air?
At that instant, it was as though someone had pressed pause on Gu Rong's mind. For a full half-second, it was blank.
Then he saw Yang Xing.
In the empty air more than ten meters away, the young man stood suspended in the sky, his robes snapping in the gale. Yet he was no longer wearing that loose satin sleeping robe.
At some unknown point, Yang Xing had changed into a fitted blue-black long robe. The neat, close-cut cloth outlined his one-meter-eighty-five frame, making him appear straight and imposing. The fierce winds whipped the hem of his robe wildly about, his loose strands of hair fluttering as his entire bearing abruptly shifted from the utterly lazy manner he had displayed in the hall into something else.
Composure.
The composure of someone looking down upon heaven and earth.
Gu Rong realized something.
His pupils contracted sharply again. At the same instant, his body shot backward, flashing several times as he opened a distance of several hundred meters.
Cold sweat.
Great sheets of cold sweat poured from his back. In the freezing wind a thousand meters above the ground, it chilled him to the bone.
How was this possible?
Gu Rong's mind raced.
He was a Rank 95 Super Douluo. Rank 95! Ordinary Titled Douluo were no different from ants before him. Across the entire Douluo Continent, the people who could make him feel threatened could be counted on one hand.
But just now—
From the main hall to a thousand meters in the air.
During that transition, he had sensed nothing abnormal.
No spatial-rending fluctuations, no sensation of Soul Power invading his body, no warning whatsoever that could have allowed him to react.
It was as if someone had simply swapped two worlds in the instant he blinked.
And he, Gu Rong, a Rank 95 Super Douluo, had possessed no ability to resist throughout the entire process.
Gu Rong's Martial Soul was the Bone Dragon. The Bone Dragon itself possessed the special ability to travel through space, and that was one of the foundations of his standing on the continent. His sensitivity to spatial power far surpassed that of most experts at his level.
Yet he had sensed nothing.
What did that mean?
It meant that the other party's control over space far exceeded the limits of his understanding.
Someone capable of instantly transferring a Rank 95 Super Douluo without leaving him even the slightest room to resist—Gu Rong had lived for decades, and in all his memories, the people capable of such a thing... Gu Rong had lived for decades, and in all his memories, the people capable of such a thing...
There were none.
Or rather, he had yet to encounter a single person capable of doing that to him.
Even Rank 97 or Rank 98 peak Douluo, using their strongest abilities against him, could not control him so effortlessly.
Much less a young man standing before him, terrifyingly manipulating him through the spatial abilities in which he himself excelled.
Were hundred-thousand-year Soul Rings really this powerful?
Gu Rong's back went completely cold.
But he did not retreat.
Cold sweat was cold sweat, and his entire body was taut with tension. Yet Gu Rong's next move was not to flee.
It was to erupt.
"Seventh Soul Skill, Bone Dragon True Body!"
His roar exploded through the howling high-altitude winds.
Gu Rong's body rapidly expanded, his bones stretching as his form underwent a drastic transformation.
His humanoid form completely vanished within a few breaths, replaced by a colossal Bone Dragon with a wingspan of dozens of meters.
Its entire body was made of the hardest bone, shrouded in deep purple radiance. Two clusters of ghostly purple flame burned in its hollow dragon eyes, and every inch of its bones exuded the baleful aura of an ancient ferocious beast.
Its massive wings spread wide, casting a shadow across the thousand-meter-high sky.
The Bone Dragon's savage dragon eyes locked firmly onto the blue-black figure ahead.
More than ten meters away.
Yang Xing watched Gu Rong transform into the Bone Dragon True Body and nodded.
"Ready?"
His voice drifted through the howling high-altitude wind, light and calm, as though he were asking whether the other man had eaten.
Gu Rong did not respond. The ghostly purple flames in his dragon eyes burned more fiercely.
Yang Xing smiled.
"Then I'll begin."
The moment his words fell—
Yang Xing vanished from Gu Rong's sight.
The next instant, he appeared without warning beside the Bone Dragon's enormous body. His movements were too fast for the naked eye to follow. His right leg swept out, wrapped in dazzling lightning like a gigantic blue-violet thunderblade, and smashed viciously into the Bone Dragon's ribs.
With a muffled, earth-shaking boom, the Bone Dragon's massive body, dozens of meters long, was kicked sideways for dozens of meters by that seemingly insignificant strike, tearing through the air with a piercing sonic boom.
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