Tang San moved.
He did not retreat, circle around, or choose any rational response.
Facing a steel tide composed of forty Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts, he chose the craziest—and most "Tang San"—method.
Charge.
Clear Sky Hammer's second soul skill, Earthshattering Hammer!
The pitch-black giant hammer tore through the air with a black vortex that ripped at space itself, 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 formed.
Bang—!
Iron Wall exploded.
It had not cracked—it had been blasted apart from the center into a shower of light fragments! The two-thousand-pound bear body was hurled fifteen meters away, crashing heavily into the edge of the arena and reducing the hard stone slabs to dust!
The entire venue fell silent.
Second hammer.
Two ghostly black shadows silently struck from the left and right flanks, the Shadow Leopards' claws aimed straight for Tang San's waist and ribs.
Without even turning his head, Tang San swung the Clear Sky Hammer in a sweeping arc.
The wind arrived before the hammer did!
The violent hammer wind forcibly drove the two Shadow Leopards out of the air. They were flung aside by the tremendous force midair, their fur bursting apart as they rolled through the air with shrill cries.
Third hammer.
The hammerhead turned and came straight down at the ground!
Boom!
With Tang San at the center, the arena floor within an eight-meter radius was lifted up in one piece! A violent circular shockwave swept outward, throwing three Fearclaw Bears off balance. A fatal gap appeared in the impregnable battle formation.
Three hammers, formation broken.
On the VIP platform, the wine cup in Bone Douluo's hand silently turned to powder and slipped through his fingers.
It had not been crushed.
It had been shattered by the lingering Soul Power shockwave, which remained bone-chilling even from hundreds of meters away.
"The Clear Sky Hammer..." Snake Granny's voice was dry. "This is the number one offensive martial soul in the world."
Grandmaster gripped the cold railing tightly with both hands, his knuckles turning white from the force.
He was trembling.
Not from fear, but from uncontrollable excitement.
That was his disciple.
Surrounded by thousands, he had torn through the enemy formation head-on with his own strength alone!
The mockery in Su Chen's eyes vanished completely.
"Iron Wall, switch positions."
His voice was not loud, yet it clearly entered the consciousness of every Soul Beast.
The four Black Tortoise Giant Turtles that had been stationed at the rear instantly turned ethereal. In the next moment, they appeared out of thin air directly in Tang San's path.
Nether Exchange!
Four Ten-Thousand-Year turtle shells overlapped, layer upon layer of Black Tortoise Immortal Shields nesting together to form a wall of despair that shimmered with eerie green light.
Tang San's fourth hammer arrived.
The giant hammer slammed against the shield wall.
Rumble!
Spiderweb-like cracks spread wildly across the shield's surface, yet it did not shatter immediately.
The ultimate defense of four Ten-Thousand-Year Black Tortoises had forcibly withstood the Clear Sky 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 dove from three tricky angles, their crisscrossing Thunderfeather Blades sealing off every possible landing point Tang San could evade toward.
The six Nether Shadow Leopards melted into the shadows at the same time.
From beneath Tang San's feet, behind his back, and in blind spots beyond his sight—six utterly impossible directions—they launched a hunt from the netherworld.
Lightning as a prison, assassination as a blade, and the front as a wall.
Three nooses suddenly tightened in the same second.
The Mysterious Heaven Skill within Tang San revolved madly at an unprecedented speed. Pale golden energy protected his body as he dodged and blocked through the gaps between lightning flashes and claw shadows.
His expenditure was skyrocketing at an astonishing rate.
A Thunderfeather Blade grazed his shoulder, leaving behind a charred mark.
A claw tip swept across his back, sending a string of scorching blood droplets flying.
He was bleeding.
He was being worn down.
He was being mercilessly crushed beneath the three-pronged battle formation.
But he did not fall.
Every swing of the Clear Sky Hammer precisely knocked back a Soul Beast closing in on him. He was like a stubborn piece of iron trapped beneath a ten-thousand-ton hydraulic press, enduring pressure from all sides yet refusing to deform.
For the first time, Su Chen frowned.
A battle of attrition could not kill Tang San.
The Mysterious Heaven Skill's endurance far exceeded his expectations.
He had to disrupt Tang San's rhythm.
Su Chen's orders changed once more.
Eight Fearclaw Bears abandoned defense and switched to a frontal assault, using pure power to compress Tang San's defensive space.
The three Thunder Eagles suddenly climbed higher, gathering lightning that made one's heart tremble.
Ten Thousand Thunders Descend.
Frontal suppression, aerial charging.
Tang San had only three seconds left.
Within three seconds, he had to choose: endure the Fearclaw Bears' charge head-on, or risk being torn apart while evading the lightning bombardment.
Tang San chose a third path.
He closed his eyes.
Purple Demon Eyes—Mental Shock!
An invisible mental spike tore through space, penetrating the obstruction of every Soul Beast, ignoring physical distance as it viciously stabbed into Su Chen's Sea of Spirit.
Su Chen froze.
His consciousness went blank for an instant, as though all sound and light had been stripped from the world.
Zero point three seconds.
Only zero point three seconds of interrupted control.
But on the battlefield, those zero point three seconds were eternity.
Three Fearclaw Bears lost their aim during their charge, two Thunder Eagles abruptly stopped gathering power, and one Shadow Leopard even stumbled out of the shadows.
Tang San opened his eyes.
The Clear Sky Hammer gathered every bit of power he could wield, sending the two Black Tortoises before him flying with a single strike!
The defensive line had opened!
His body became a straight black arrow, breaking through every obstacle as he charged directly at Su Chen himself!
Tens of thousands of spectators rose in shock.
"He got through! He reached Su Chen!"
"Take down the summoner himself, and the battle is over!"
In Su Chen's vision, the black giant hammer rapidly enlarged. Behind it was Tang San's young face, cold and hard as ice.
The air shrieked.
The hammer's edge had reached his brow.
—Just as that destructive force was about to touch his skin, half an inch away.
Golden flames ignited in Su Chen's pupils.
It was not an illusion.
Two clusters of golden flame erupted from the depths of his pupils, illuminating his face until he seemed neither god nor demon.
Void Throne · Passive Awakening—King's Will!
The Supreme Summoner's Spirit Sea automatically triggered its strongest countermeasure the instant it detected that its host was under a lethal threat!
In an instant, Su Chen's mental power tripled. It not only devoured the residual force of the Purple Demon Eyes at once, but transformed into a mental tsunami that surged back along its original path in fierce retaliation!
Tang San let out a muffled groan.
The searing pain made his consciousness blur for an instant, and his wrist involuntarily shifted.
The Clear Sky Hammer's trajectory veered half an inch.
The destructive hammer wind roared past Su Chen's right ear, slicing 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 sweat gathered on 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 yet carrying a hoarseness from the mental backlash.
"Tang San."
"You are the strongest opponent I've 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 extremely 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 over his chest!
Ten Dark Golden Terrorclaw Bears surged violently from the passage in Su Chen's palm, pressed directly against Tang San's body!
Point-Blank Summoning!
Tang San's protective energy instantly evaporated.
The combined impact of ten Ten-Thousand-Year Fearclaw Bears blasted him away from where he stood—boom!
Tang San's body tumbled through the air, crossing half the arena. At last, he drove the tip of the Clear Sky Hammer into the ground, carving a five-meter-long charred trench across the arena floor before barely stopping himself.
He lowered his head.
The clothes over his chest had become strips of cloth. The Mysterious Heaven Skill had protected his organs, but the agony of three broken ribs came through with perfect clarity.
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, almost imperceptibly.
The strain of maintaining forty Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts, the eruption of King's Will, and the excessive burden of Point-Blank Summoning—he too had reached his limit.
Both men stood at the edge of complete exhaustion.
Leaning on his hammer, Tang San slowly straightened.
Su Chen said nothing.
On the battlefield, every Soul Beast's roar, the Thunder Eagles' crackling arcs, the Shadow Leopards' low growls... all vanished at that moment.
All forty Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts turned toward their master.
Waiting for the final command.
Su Chen closed his eyes, then opened them again.
Then—
The forty summons dissipated at once like dream bubbles.
Only two battered figures and rubble covering the ruined arena remained.
Su Chen raised his right fist.
All his remaining Soul Power surged into it madly.
An incomparably solid phantom of a Dark Golden Terrorclaw Bear enveloped his fist. Its radiance was so blinding that the spectators in the front rows could not open their eyes.
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 Clear Sky Hammer over his head once more, pouring every last trace of Mysterious Heaven Skill inner power into the hammer.
Pale golden divine patterns lit up across the black hammerhead.
The next second, both stepped forward.
The arena beneath their feet shattered completely.
Black destruction and dark-golden supremacy collided fiercely at the very center of the arena.
—Hummm.
The world lost its sound.
The ultimate explosion exceeded the limits of human hearing, transforming into pure white noise that devoured everything.
A 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.
Like a kite with its string cut, the referee was hurled more than ten meters away and slammed miserably into the distant protective barrier.
Dust and smoke filled the air for a full six seconds.
Six seconds later, the dust settled.
Tang San was on one knee.
The Clear Sky Hammer braced him from the front. The sleeve on his right arm had been completely destroyed, his palm split open, blood dripping down the hammer's handle.
Su Chen remained 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 it.
But in the end, he was still standing.
The referee struggled to his feet. He glanced at Tang San kneeling in the crater, then at the swaying Su Chen.
He cleared his hoarse throat and shouted the final verdict with all his strength.
"Final match—winner—"
"Sky Abyss Academy, Su Chen!"
The entire arena fell silent for three seconds.
Then, the earth-shaking roar of tens of thousands of people nearly tore the roof off the stadium.
Su Chen turned and walked toward the competitors' tunnel.
Every step he took was slow, yet steady.
Just before his figure vanished into the darkness, he stopped without turning around.
"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 shattered stones with barely audible sounds.
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 may not be the case."
Leaning on the Clear Sky Hammer, he walked out of the massive crater that symbolized his first crushing defeat, one step at a time.
His back remained straight.
At the highest point of the VIP seats, Bibi Dong, who had watched in silence all along, finally moved.
She rose to her feet, straightened her magnificent sleeve, and said something to Qian Renxue beside her.
Her voice was soft, yet 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 crossed the clamor of tens of thousands, passed through layers of space, and settled on the back disappearing into the shadows of the tunnel.
"It is—an ultimatum."
Before you continue