A Sword Cultivator's Mouth Had to Be Even Harder Than His Sword!

It had finally come.

There was not much surprise, only the calm and vigilance of having expected it all along.

Under that sudden pressure, even the wind he breathed seemed to turn "viscous." It was as if he had been thrown into deep water, every movement meeting enormous resistance!

Yet after only the briefest pause, Chen Ruiping moved like a nimble fish, forcefully "flicking his tail." Invisible sword qi enveloped him, carving out a path through that stagnant "dead water" as he stamped his foot and retreated!

"Shrrk!"

At almost the exact same instant, something suddenly plowed through the ground slightly ahead of where he had been standing. The black soil was sliced apart as though by an invisible blade, opening several deep furrows.

—He had barely avoided it!

There had been no visible sign of an attack, but that subtle fluctuation—this was the effect of a mental-type ability!

Realizing the truth, Chen Ruiping immediately became more alert. Honestly, even he did not know where his bizarre combat instincts came from. Yet so often, at the critical moment between life and death, his body simply reacted on its own!

—It was practically like some profound, ghostly reflex, repeatedly honed through life-and-death struggles until it had been firmly engraved into his subconscious.

But the current situation clearly was no longer one where "anyone with hands could handle it." Objectively speaking, this was a case of "I need to sit up and fight seriously"!

The newcomer was also Third Tier.

That subtle, dangerous instinct unique to a Sword Cultivator had already made that clear.

For individuals who had reached the final step before the "middle three tiers"—the last of the first three tiers—even if it was still only an embryonic form, they had begun to reveal a trace of the true essence