"Junior Brother Fang, don't be rash! How can you handle so many demons?"
"Even all of us senior brothers and sisters can't do anything. Are you saying you can?"
Wei Wen, Ding Long, and the others were even more anxious than Fang Qianyuan himself. They truly did not want to see him take such a risk, and thought he had let Ba Ming's taunts get under his skin and was acting out of pride.
Fang Qianyuan said, "Don't worry. I'll be fine. There may be a lot of demons, but as long as I keep moving carefully, I guarantee they won't even touch me!"
What had seemed like a flight of fancy actually stunned everyone when he delivered it with such calm confidence. Wei Wen opened his mouth, but for a moment, he had no idea how to dissuade him.
Without waiting for any further objections, Fang Qianyuan turned and charged toward the enemy ranks, taking the offensive himself.
He had ample confidence and needed no one's permission. He had only told them to give them some warning.
"Junior Brother Fang..."
Many of those who saw this were overwhelmed by conflicting emotions.
Ba Ming stood rooted to the spot like a wooden chicken, unsure whether to call Fang Qianyuan back or stubbornly stand his ground.
But another wave of demons surged toward them just then, leaving him no choice but to forget Fang Qianyuan and keep fighting.
Ba Ming's face turned livid as he muttered, "You brought this on yourself. Don't blame me if you die!"
"Ba Ming, you!" Wei Wen and the others glared at him, but the demons around them kept multiplying. They no longer even had time to argue.
Once among the enemy, Fang Qianyuan did not act recklessly. He killed the weaker demons blocking his path while fighting on the move. After several dozen breaths, he reached a densely packed mass of demons several dozen yards in front of the array.
Whether fighting or resting earlier, he had been watching for opportunities, trying to find the demons' weak points.
And he had discovered this spot where their leaders were clustered together.
Indeed, the reason he was so confident he could draw the demons away was that he had discovered a weakness in their army that was not really a weakness at all.
Their attack formation was poor, and their forces had not been properly distributed, leaving many demon leaders unable to squeeze their way to the front.
Demons and spirit creatures alike had physical bodies. They could not all pile together without getting in one another's way.
A few individuals could still get through using agile footwork, even leaping over the enemy ranks, but that became impossible for the larger demons, or when there were too many of them.
Thus, these demon leaders simply stayed in the rear, directing their minions to attack the humans.
Seeing Fang Qianyuan approach, they showed him no mercy. They opened their bloody maws and bared sharp fangs and claws, preparing to attack.
But Fang Qianyuan soon accelerated, trailing a succession of afterimages.
Shadow Step!
He had already used this combat technique repeatedly at the third transformation. Now that his physique had undergone a metamorphosis and his strength had grown even greater, it was naturally no trouble at all.
As he moved swiftly, not a single demon covering the ground could touch even the hem of his clothes. He soon left them behind.
"Hmm? He really does have some skill?" Though the people behind him had been arguing, they had also been paying close attention to Fang Qianyuan's movements. Their eyes lit up at the sight.
Wolf Rush Strike!
Suddenly, Fang Qianyuan shot forward like lightning, charging straight up to an Ape Demon leader at the fourth transformation.
Before the Ape Demon leader could react, he plunged his hand, wreathed in razor-sharp claw gang, into its chest.
This Ape Demon leader was only at the fourth transformation, making it one of the weaker leaders. Caught by Fang Qianyuan's sudden, forceful ambush despite their equal cultivation, it had no time to react before its chest was pierced.
A jet of blood erupted from its body, while Fang Qianyuan had already become an afterimage and vanished behind it.
"Too reckless. Even if he uses all his strength to kill that demon, what good will it do?" Not long before, Ba Ming had lectured Fang Qianyuan that cultivation did not necessarily equal strength. Seeing him dispatch a demon leader at his own level so cleanly made Ba Ming's cheeks burn. Still, he kicked away a wild wolf lunging to bite him and deliberately voiced his criticism.
The others could not help worrying about Fang Qianyuan either.
To them, this junior brother truly was being far too rash.
Perhaps it would have been a splendid one-hit kill in an arena match, but amid the tangled chaos of this battle, it was utterly meaningless.
All it would do was expose his weaknesses and leave him to be slaughtered by the other demons.
He was still too young.
But soon, one of the Training Institute disciples watching him cried out, "H-how is that possible?"
Ba Ming also looked as though he had seen a ghost, shock written across his face.
After that explosive attack, Fang Qianyuan had not fallen into a pause to recover as they had expected. Instead, he unleashed Shadow Step and Wolf Rush Strike again, attacking the other demon leaders with even greater speed and ferocity.
His figure left a string of afterimages in the air, moving so swiftly that the onlookers could barely take it all in.
Within a single breath, blood sprayed. Bloody blossoms burst from several demon leaders almost simultaneously.
Fang Qianyuan, a fourth-transformation Spirit Tamer, had actually wounded them all at once!
"Roar!"
"Awooo!"
Enraged, the demon leaders chased after him. Most of the nearby minions answered their calls as well, turning to surround and intercept him.
But there were simply too many demons of every size around Fang Qianyuan. Even the ordinary ones stood over five feet tall. Some intermediate demons reached ten feet, while those that had mutated and advanced were fifteen, even nearly twenty feet tall.
The demons shoved against one another in a crushing throng. Only a dozen or so could truly threaten him.
Yet Fang Qianyuan was far too fast. With repeated uses of Shadow Step, not a single demon could lay a claw on him. They could only flail and snap like mad things.
Amid the chaos, some demons even failed to dodge in time and collided headfirst with others. Fang Qianyuan then stepped on their faces to launch himself swiftly in another direction.
He did more than dodge. He also seized opportunities to ambush more demons. He killed the weaker ones blocking his way outright, but did not overreach against the tougher, thick-skinned ones that were harder to kill. After a single strike, he immediately withdrew.
Most demons were vicious by nature, and their wounds only made them more frenzied. Every one of them was thoroughly enraged, fixing on Fang Qianyuan as though they bore him a bitter blood feud.
Gradually, aside from the inner ring of demons near the Teleportation Array that could reach the Training Institute disciples, almost all the demons farther out were drawn to him and chased after him.
Seeing this, Fang Qianyuan quickly turned toward the cavern's outer wall, then ran in the opposite direction from the Black Vortex.
Even now, Fang Qianyuan still had strength to spare. Compared with when he had been at the third transformation, his cultivation had not only risen, but his body had also been strengthened by another metamorphosis after absorbing the medicinal power of the Treasure Pill.
That was his greatest source of confidence.
"He succeeded!"
"He really did it!"
"Wonderful! Let's seize this chance to fight our way out! Everyone, attack together!"
The Training Institute disciples watched, dumbfounded. Soon, as though waking from a dream, they began shouting in exhilaration.