Su Chen VS Tang San (Part 2)

Tang San moved.

He did not retreat, did not circle around, and did not choose any rational response.

Facing a steel torrent formed by forty Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts, he chose the craziest, most "Tang San" method.

Charge.

Haotian Hammer's second soul skill, Earthshattering Hammer!

The pitch-black giant hammer tore through the air with a black vortex that seemed to rip space apart, smashing head-on into the diamond formation formed by the Dark Golden Terrorclaw Bears!

First hammer.

The Fearclaw Bear codenamed "Iron Wall" at the front of the formation crossed its arms, and a dark golden soul-power barrier instantly took shape.

Bang—!

Iron Wall exploded.

It had not cracked. The point of impact had been blasted into a skyful of glowing fragments! The two-thousand-pound bear was flung fifteen meters through the air and crashed heavily into the edge of the arena, shattering the hard stone slabs into dust!

The entire venue fell silent.

Second hammer.

Two ghostly black figures silently struck from the left and right flanks, Shadow Leopard claws aiming straight for Tang San's waist and ribs.

Without even looking back, Tang San swung the Haotian Hammer in a sweeping arc.

Before the hammer arrived, the wind did!

The violent hammer wind forcibly drove the two Shadow Leopards out of the air. They were hurled aside by immense force in midair, their fur bursting apart as they rolled away with shrill cries.

Third hammer.

The hammerhead shifted, dropping vertically toward the ground!

Boom!

With Tang San at its center, the arena floor within an eight-meter radius was ripped up in one piece! A violent circular shockwave swept outward. Three Fearclaw Bears lost their footing, and a fatal gap appeared in the seemingly impregnable battle formation.

Three hammers, formation broken.

In the VIP seats, the wine cup in Bone Douluo's hand silently crumbled into powder and slipped through his fingers.

It had not been crushed by his grip.

It had been shattered by the bone-piercing soul-power aftershock, even from hundreds of meters away.

"The Haotian Hammer..." Serpent Woman's voice was dry. "This is the number one offensive martial soul in the world."

The master gripped the cold railing with both hands, his knuckles white from the force.

He was trembling.

Not from fear, but from uncontrollable excitement.

That was his disciple.

Surrounded by an army, tearing through the enemy formation head-on with his own strength alone!

The amusement in Su Chen's eyes vanished completely.

"Iron Wall, switch positions."

His voice was not loud, yet it clearly entered the mind of every soul beast.

The four giant Black Tortoises that had been stationed in the rear blurred instantly. In the next moment, they appeared out of thin air directly in Tang San's path.

Nether Exchange!

Four Ten-Thousand-Year tortoise shells overlapped, their Black Tortoise Immortal Shields nesting layer upon layer and forming a wall of despair that shimmered with eerie green light.

Tang San's fourth hammer arrived.

The giant hammer struck the shield wall.

Rumble!

Spiderweb-like cracks spread wildly across the shield's surface, but it did not shatter immediately.

The ultimate defense of four Ten-Thousand-Year Black Tortoises had forcibly blocked the Haotian Hammer's formation-breaking strike!

Tang San was thrown back by the terrifying recoil, his body freezing in midair for half a second.

That instant.

That was the instant Su Chen had been waiting for.

"Thunder Eagles, bombard position three."

"Shadow Leopards, hunting formation."

Three Purple Lightning Thunder Eagles dived from three tricky angles, their intersecting Thunderfeather Blades sealing off every possible landing point for Tang San to evade to.

The six Nether Shadow Leopards melted into the shadows at the same time.

From beneath Tang San's feet, behind his back, and his blind spots—six absolutely impossible directions—they launched a hunt from the netherworld.

Lightning formed the cage, assassination the blade, and the front line the wall.

Three nooses suddenly tightened in the same second.

The Xuantian Technique within Tang San's body surged madly at an unprecedented speed. Pale golden protective energy covered his body as he dodged and blocked through the gaps between lightning and claws.

His energy expenditure was soaring at an astonishing rate.

A Thunderfeather Blade grazed his shoulder, leaving behind a charred mark.

The tip of a claw swept across his back, sending a string of scalding blood droplets flying.

He was bleeding.

He was being worn down.

He was being mercilessly crushed by a formation closing in from three directions.

But he did not fall.

Every swing of the Haotian Hammer precisely smashed back an approaching soul beast. He was like a stubborn chunk of iron trapped beneath a hydraulic press weighing ten thousand tons, enduring pressure from all sides yet refusing to bend.

For the first time, Su Chen frowned.

A battle of attrition would not kill Tang San.

The Xuantian Technique's endurance far exceeded his expectations.

He had to disrupt Tang San's rhythm.

Su Chen's orders changed again.

Eight Fearclaw Bears abandoned defense and shifted to a frontal assault, using pure strength to compress Tang San's defensive space.

The three Thunder Eagles suddenly soared higher, gathering lightning in the sky that made hearts tremble.

Ten Thousand Thunders Descend.

Frontal suppression, power gathering from above.

Tang San had only three seconds left.

Within those three seconds, he had to make a choice: withstand the charge of the bear pack, or risk being torn apart to evade the bombardment of lightning.

Tang San chose a third path.

He closed his eyes.

Purple Demon Eyes—Mental Shock!

An invisible mental spike tore through space, pierced past every soul beast's obstruction, ignored physical distance, and viciously stabbed into Su Chen's sea of consciousness.

Su Chen froze.

His mind went blank for an instant, as if all sound and light had been stripped from the world.

Point three seconds.

Only point three seconds of interrupted control.

But on the battlefield, those point three seconds were eternity.

Three Fearclaw Bears lost their aim mid-charge, two Thunder Eagles abruptly stopped gathering power, and one Shadow Leopard even stumbled out of the shadows.

Tang San opened his eyes.

The Haotian Hammer gathered every last bit of power he could mobilize, and with one strike, he sent the two Black Tortoises before him flying!

The defensive line opened!

His body became a straight black arrow, breaking through every obstacle and shooting directly toward Su Chen himself!

Tens of thousands of people in the stands rose to their feet in shock.

"He broke through! He reached Su Chen!"

"Take down the summoner himself, and the battle is over!"

In Su Chen's vision, that pitch-black giant hammer rapidly expanded. Behind it was Tang San's young face, cold and hard as ice.

The air screamed.

The hammer's edge had reached his brow.

—Just as that destructive force was about to touch his skin, with only half an inch left.

Golden flames ignited in Su Chen's pupils.

It was not an illusion.

Two clusters of golden fire erupted from the depths of his eyes, casting his face in a light that made him seem neither god nor demon.

Void Throne's passive awakening—King's Will!

The Supreme Summoner's sea of consciousness automatically activated its strongest countermeasure the instant it detected that its host faced a lethal threat!

Su Chen's mental power tripled in an instant. Not only did it immediately devour the lingering effects of the Purple Demon Eyes, it also transformed into a mental tsunami that surged fiercely back along its path!

Tang San let out a muffled groan.

The agony made his consciousness blur for an instant, and his wrist involuntarily tilted.

The Haotian Hammer's trajectory shifted by half an inch.

The destructive hammer wind howled past Su Chen's right ear, cutting off a strand of black hair and leaving a half-meter-long white vacuum trail in the air behind him.

The two faced each other.

Less than a foot apart.

Su Chen could see the beads of sweat clinging to Tang San's eyelashes, while Tang San could see the golden flames slowly fading from Su Chen's pupils.

Su Chen spoke, his voice soft but slightly hoarse from the mental backlash.

"Tang San."

"You are the strongest opponent I have encountered since coming to this world."

"So—"

His right hand pressed against Tang San's chest.

The instant his palm touched Tang San's clothes, every hair on Tang San's body stood on end. An intensely ominous soul-power fluctuation surged forth.

It did not come from Su Chen's hand.

It came from the space beneath his palm, which was silently tearing apart!

A void passage opened at point-blank range on Tang San's chest!

Ten Dark Golden Terrorclaw Bears burst violently from the passage in Su Chen's palm, emerging pressed right against Tang San's body!

Point-Blank Summoning!

Tang San's protective energy instantly evaporated at that moment.

The combined impact of ten Ten-Thousand-Year Fearclaw Bears blasted him from where he stood—sending him flying.

Tang San's body spun through the air, crossing half the arena. In the end, he drove the tip of the Haotian Hammer into the ground, carving a five-meter-long charred trench before barely coming to a stop.

He lowered his head.

The clothing over his chest had been reduced to strips. The Xuantian Technique had protected his internal organs, but the agonizing pain of three broken ribs came through clearly.

He raised his head and looked toward the other end of the arena.

Su Chen still stood where he was, his face pale as paper and his legs trembling faintly.

The expenditure of maintaining forty Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts, the eruption of King's Will, and the overload from Point-Blank Summoning—he too had reached his limit.

Both of them stood at the edge of exhaustion.

Leaning on his hammer, Tang San slowly straightened.

Su Chen said nothing.

The roars of every soul beast, the electrical arcs around the Thunder Eagles, the low growls of the Shadow Leopards... all vanished at that moment.

The forty Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts all looked toward their master.

Waiting for the final command.

Su Chen closed his eyes, then opened them again.

Then—

All forty summons dissipated at once like dream bubbles.

Only two battered figures and shattered stones covering the ruined arena remained.

Su Chen raised his right fist.

All his remaining soul power surged into it wildly.

An incomparably solid phantom of a Dark Golden Terrorclaw Bear covered his fist. Its radiance was so blinding that the front-row audience could not keep their eyes open.

All power compressed, condensed, and poured into a single point.

Supreme Summoner combat skill—Beast-Soul Unity.

Tang San saw it.

He asked nothing.

He merely raised the Haotian Hammer over his head once more and poured the final trace of Xuantian Technique inner power within his body into the hammer.

Pale golden divine patterns lit up across the black hammerhead.

The next second, both men stepped forward at once.

The arena beneath their feet shattered completely.

Black destruction and dark golden supremacy collided fiercely at the very center of the arena.

—Hum.

The world lost its sound.

The ultimate explosion surpassed the limits of human hearing, becoming pure white noise that devoured everything.

The devastating shockwave expanded outward in a sphere.

The center of the arena collapsed into a massive crater ten meters across.

The first three rows of spectator seats were completely blown away by the blast.

The referee flew more than ten meters like a kite with its string cut, crashing miserably into the protective barrier in the distance.

Dust and smoke filled the air for a full six seconds.

Six seconds later, the dust settled.

Tang San was down on one knee.

The Haotian Hammer propped him up in front of him. The sleeve on his right arm had been completely shredded, his palm split open, blood dripping down the hammer's handle.

Su Chen was still standing.

The bones in his right fist were fractured, and his entire arm hung limply at his side. His gaze was somewhat unfocused, his body swaying as though he could collapse at any moment. Everyone could see that he might fall at any time.

But in the end, he remained standing.

The referee struggled to his feet. He glanced at Tang San, kneeling in the deep crater, then at Su Chen, who was swaying on his feet.

He cleared his hoarse throat and, using every last bit of strength, roared the final verdict.

"The final battle—the victor—"

"Sky Abyss Academy's Su Chen!"

The entire venue fell silent for three seconds.

Then, the thunderous roars of tens of thousands of people nearly blew off the arena's dome.

Su Chen turned and walked toward the competitors' passage.

Every step he took was slow, yet steady.

Just before his figure disappeared into the darkness, he stopped without looking back.

"Tang San."

"Next time, I won't win by just a hair."

At the bottom of the crater, Tang San remained silent for a long time.

Drops of blood fell onto the broken stones, making sounds too faint to hear.

Then, he smiled.

The curve of his lips was stained with blood, yet it burned with a fiercer light than ever before.

"Next time..."

"That might not be the case."

Leaning on the Haotian Hammer, he walked out of the enormous crater that symbolized his first crushing defeat, one step at a time.

His back remained perfectly straight.

At the highest point of the VIP stands, Bibi Dong, who had watched in silence the entire time, finally moved.

She rose to her feet, smoothed her luxurious sleeve, and said something to Qian Renxue beside her.

Her voice was soft, but Qian Renxue's expression changed drastically in an instant.

"Pass down the order."

"I want to see Su Chen."

"This is not an invitation."

Her gaze passed through the clamor of tens of thousands, through layer upon layer of space, and settled on the figure vanishing into the shadows of the passage.

"It is—an ultimatum."