Now that Su Jiu was known to have reached the Nascent Soul Realm, her arts had undoubtedly improved considerably.
Yet however much they had improved, the three of them were still only at the Nascent Soul level.
Huo Yun was the first to falter. He was formidable, stronger even than most others at his level, but that strength was still nowhere near enough to compare with geniuses like Su Jiu and Chu Luohen.
There was, in the end, still a gap between them.
While fighting alongside them just now, he had discovered his shortcomings. They lay not only in his use of arts and spiritual qi, but also in the speed at which they formed hand seals.
He had always considered himself adept at arts, but the moment he formed hand seals alongside those two, he realized he could not keep up with their speed at all.
Their hand seals were perfectly synchronized, and even their overall awareness surpassed his.
The two could nimbly change their positioning and the arts in their hands. Sometimes, they could even anticipate Ying Cen's movements, yet he could do none of these things.
With all these factors piled together, he lagged a full several breaths behind them.
But on further reflection, Huo Yun felt that his performance was what one should normally expect of someone in the Nascent Soul Realm. After all, their opponent was a cultivator approaching the middle stage of the Out-of-Body realm. She surpassed them in every respect, and to his mind, it would have been perfectly normal for her to defeat them.
Yet those two had somehow fought Ying Cen to a standstill.
They cast so quickly that even he could only catch a few streaks of lingering light. Everything else escaped him.
In truth, Huo Yun had only managed