"What kind of joke is this?!"
"He actually punched... Teacher Zhou clean off her feet?!!"
After several seconds of deathly silence, the entire Soul Fighting Arena erupted into a deafening uproar.
Students and teachers alike were stunned by El's punch.
A Soul Emperor who had gone all out from the start, using two enhancement-type Soul Skills, had actually been punched by a Soul Elder and left sprawled on the ground like a dead dog.
He hadn't even used a Soul Skill!
Only his Martial Soul!
The Soul Master World was about to see its skies change...
That was what everyone who witnessed the scene thought.
Including Yan Shaozhe, whose cultivation was the highest of anyone present.
The moment El unleashed his dragon might, he too felt intense fear emanating from his bright phoenix Martial Soul.
If he hadn't been a level 95 Super Douluo, but someone whose cultivation was close to El's, even Martial Soul Possession would probably have become exceedingly difficult.
Could it be...
Does this boy's Martial Soul have some connection to an exceptionally powerful phoenix??
But his Martial Soul is clearly a dragon...
A dragon and a phoenix-is that right?
And what level of phoenix could make my bright phoenix afraid?
Yan Shaozhe's thoughts were almost tangled into a ball of thread.
Forget it. I'll look into it later.
He turned all his attention back to the stage.
Compared to moments earlier, the situation had changed again.
After being sent flying, Zhou Yi spent a full two seconds in a daze before realizing what had happened.
She had actually...
She had actually been sent flying by a student's punch!
And that was with Crimson Dragon Power and Red Dragon Scale Armor enhancing her!
Hearing the cries of astonishment around her,
Zhou Yi's bruised face turned ashen, then rapidly flushed red.
Humiliation, shame, anger, resentment...
Even murderous intent!
All those emotions churned in her chest, finally blooming into a venomous flower.
That brat has some kind of true dragon Martial Soul with an extremely high-grade bloodline. My Martial Soul was suppressed by his bloodline.
But even if you can suppress my Martial Soul, can you weaken my pure flame attacks too?!!
The brat is coming closer...
Zhou Yi lowered her head, hiding the vicious smile at the corner of her mouth in the shadows as she deliberately rose slowly.
Only when El strolled up to her did she abruptly lift her head, a sharp gleam flashing in her eyes,
while her fourth and sixth Soul Rings lit up simultaneously!
"Brat, you're..."
Far too arrogant!
The sharp pain in her stomach once again prevented Zhou Yi from finishing her sentence.
El lashed out with a kick, planting his foot in her abdomen as though kicking a dog and sending her flying again.
Still, El thoughtfully controlled his strength so she wouldn't fall outside the stage.
"How is this possible?!"
Zhou Yi quickly rose after being knocked away, her eyes filled with disbelief.
Ultimately, although El hadn't held back with either attack, he hadn't exerted much strength either. For a Soul Emperor like Zhou Yi, the damage was slight, but the insult was immense.
"What happened to my Soul Skills?!"
Struck by an even more humiliating attack in front of the entire first year and the academy's senior staff, Zhou Yi was on the verge of madness.
And the reason for it all was that her Soul Skills had actually failed to activate!
El should have been swallowed by flames the moment he approached her!
"Want to know why your Soul Skills failed to activate?"
Now the center of everyone's attention, El raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.
Snap!
All eyes on me!
El lifted his chin, savoring the feeling of being watched by everyone.
"Now comes the technique reveal!"
"My dragon element has the ability to erase all natural elements."
Crimson-black arcs of electricity spread and danced across his dragon claws.
"Once a Dragon Element attack hits you and its energy clings to you, you have no hope of using elemental attacks unless you first neutralize and annihilate it with Soul Power."
Of course, not every element would be sealed. There were exceptions.
For example, metal and earth, which leaned more toward physical matter.
Those two would only be suppressed to varying degrees, rather than becoming completely unusable.
"Isn't this child a little too arrogant?"
Yan Shaozhe frowned and spoke quietly.
He had voiced what everyone was thinking.
Unless the gap in cultivation was truly enormous, battles between Soul Masters were, to a great extent, battles of information.
Understanding an opponent's abilities and making targeted preparations was a fundamental skill for any Soul Master.
Explaining his abilities so openly seemed rather unwise.
But on second thought, he suddenly understood.
"With El's talent, the whole world is bound to analyze his battles. Information this superficial probably couldn't stay hidden for long anyway."
"So he simply decided to reveal it right in front of his opponent..."
He's young, after all. He likes showing off.
If it were him, even knowing that others would study his information, he would never reveal it himself.
Yan Shaozhe shook his head.
Forget it. I'll just concentrate on the match...
"Sealing elements?"
After learning the nature of El's ability, Zhou Yi's expression actually eased considerably.
So I wasn't weak. My abilities were being countered!
She had merely suffered twice from a first-encounter surprise against a genius whose abilities she hadn't understood. That was understandable enough.
A savage smile appeared on Zhou Yi's face.
The next instant, her body became a blur and vanished from the spot.
As long as I win cleanly and decisively now, sweeping through him like rotten wood before a storm, no one will have anything to say!
To that end, she still intended to use her strongest killing move!
Seeing El push off the ground and move to close the distance, Zhou Yi sneered.
She mobilized her Soul Power with all her strength.
Her Soul Emperor cultivation erased the Dragon-Attribute Energy El had left on her almost instantly. Then her second Soul Ring flashed.
The red dragon's second Soul Skill, Fire Dragon Flame Breath!
A pillar of fire, somewhat "slender" due to bloodline suppression, spewed from Zhou Yi's mouth, forcing back El as he tried to approach and reapply his dragon element.
The flames burned, their terrifying heat scorching the stage's stone slabs into a lava-like state.
Seizing the opportunity, Zhou Yi made her sixth and fourth Soul Rings blaze once again.
Sixth Soul Skill: Lava Domain + Fourth Soul Skill: Lie Yan Storm!!
Terrifying heat instantly filled the air. Flames spread outward from Zhou Yi, turning the entire stage into a world of lava!
Within that orange-and-crimson molten hell, enormous fire tornadoes took shape in an instant, sweeping toward the newly landed El from every direction.
Die beneath this attack!!
Watching his figure disappear into the fire tornadoes, Zhou Yi's face filled with delight.
This is what happens when you offend me!!
"Roar!!"
Just then, a majestic, haughty dragon roar suddenly rang out, as though echoing from ancient times.
A crimson-black ripple spread outward from the spot encircled by the fire tornadoes.
Wherever it passed, the glowing orange-red lava went dark and solidified into grotesque volcanic rock.
Zhou Yi's Lava Domain had been broken!
Her smile froze on her face.
Only then did she remember that El hadn't used a single Soul Skill since the battle began.
Between the wavering fire tornadoes stood El, completely unharmed, his dark-purple scales gleaming orange-red. Beside him, his ink-black Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring shone brilliantly.
Third Soul Skill: Spell-Breaking Edict!
It manifested as a dragon roar imbued with Dragon Element, spreading outward in a circle around him with an initial radius of fifty meters.
Its effect was to directly erase all natural-element enhancements affecting enemy units caught within its range, as well as those on the battlefield.
At the same time, Dragon Element would invade their bodies. While it lingered, every elemental Soul Skill the affected target used would cause a jolting backlash, potentially preventing the skill from activating.
Against an ordinary Soul Emperor, the limits of El's cultivation might have kept his third Soul Skill from sweeping everything away so effortlessly.
But who told Zhou Yi to have a lesser dragon for her Martial Soul?
With her sixth Soul Skill broken, Soul Power surged violently inside Zhou Yi. She grunted and forcibly swallowed the blood rising in her throat.
But then her pupils abruptly contracted.
Only now did she realize that her connection to those fire tornadoes had also been severed!
Her Soul Skill had been usurped!
"I suppose your clumsy little play has come to an end?"
"I can only call it barely satisfactory. It hardly does justice to the opportunity I specially gave you to perform."
"So let me take over the next act!"
Standing where he was, El smiled at the rather bedraggled Zhou Yi.
The boy's smile was clearly sweet, yet Zhou Yi, her body somewhat numb from Soul Power backlash, felt only a chill all over.
As it turned out, her instincts were correct.
A cool streak of icy blue spread from the roots of the fire tornadoes. In an instant, her Lie Yan Storm had been dyed another color.
"Elemental Ruler: Summoning!"
El activated his first and second Soul Rings simultaneously.
"Cataclysmic Cycle: Frostflame Vortex!"
Several tornadoes composed of the "frostflame" element rapidly converged on Zhou Yi.
Fire and ice attributes of an exceedingly high grade-quite possibly the legendary ultimate attributes.
The instant she reached that conclusion, Zhou Yi decisively abandoned her attribute-enhancing third Soul Skill and instead chose her fifth Soul Skill, which enhanced her own body.
"Fifth Soul Skill: Blood-Burning Dragon Soul!"
The moment she was surrounded, Zhou Yi broke free of the Soul Power backlash and desperately mobilized her Soul Power, hastily activating her fifth Soul Skill.
Scarlet Soul Power burned across her body like flames, faintly outlining the phantom of a red dragon.
Red and blue collided.
The next moment, the ice-flame tornadoes swallowed Zhou Yi.
Under the enhancement of her fifth Soul Skill, Zhou Yi wasn't immediately injured, but was trapped within the tornadoes.
Ultimate ice and ultimate fire, those two opposing attributes, now seemed married, each intermingling with the other.
"Slowing," "solidification," "burning," "adhesion"...
All those properties appeared within this single attack. Combined with the dual suppression of bloodline and attributes, they left Zhou Yi unable to respond effectively, much less escape or disperse the tornado.
El extended his hand toward the figure shrouded in the tornado, loosely clenching his dragon claw.
Restore the conflict between attributes!
"Frostflame" split back into ultimate ice and ultimate fire. The icy core and fiery heart collided, and the two intermingled attributes instantly became mortal enemies again, each determined to crush the other utterly!
Boom!!!!
Before every spectator's eyes, a terrifying explosion erupted.
Terrifying elemental turbulence spread across the battlefield. The volcanic rock that had only recently solidified shattered inch by inch, becoming countless fragments of varying sizes that scattered on the rushing air.
A ring of interwoven golden-red and icy-blue shock waves emerged from the point where the Frostflame Vortex exploded, racing outward.
It nearly reached the faces of the students who had run fastest, arrived earliest, and secured front-row seats.
Fortunately, a golden energy suffused with the aura of light appeared in time, blocking the spreading aftershocks.
"Cough! Cough!"
The smoke and dust slowly cleared. Zhou Yi, who had faced the heart of the explosion, stood with her hair disheveled and several bits of rubble caught in it.
The dragon scales on her body had broken in several places, exposing wounds seeping blood beneath them.
Zhou Yi struggled to cough up several mouthfuls of blood. Looking at the figure slowly approaching through the settling dust, she finally found her voice.
"This is impossible..."
"I... lost?"
Even now, she still could not believe she had lost.
The battle had only just begun. It had not even been two minutes!
As a Soul Emperor, with all six Soul Skills unleashed and no restrictions on her cultivation, she had been defeated by a Soul Elder?!
Even if his Martial Soul and attributes suppressed hers, she was still a Soul Emperor!
Zhou Yi!
Are you really going to admit defeat like this, to be nailed to the pillar of shame forever and mocked by future generations?!
No!
Never!
Zhou Yi gritted her teeth and, driven by some inexplicable will, struggled to prop up her exhausted body.
?
El raised an eyebrow, but did not stop her. He simply watched, letting her do as she pleased.
Zhou Yi staggered to her feet.
As she looked at the figure before her, seemingly wreathed in light, she fell into a daze.
He really is a genius seen only once in ten thousand years.
A superior dragon-type Martial Soul, ultimate elements, a configuration of Soul Rings beyond the age limits...
Every single one is enough to stun everyone present.
But that is absolutely no reason for me to admit defeat!
I, Zhou Yi, will never again become a stepping stone for these geniuses!
Come, my Martial Soul!
Since neither bloodline nor elements are any use, we will use the flesh we have left!!
Just as we did when developing "Dragon Might,"
Red Dragon, answer me!
Zhou Yi called out to her Martial Soul deep within her heart.
As long as I give it everything, even without a bloodline boost, the physical strength of a dragon-type Soul Emperor still gives me a chance to win!
And as she called out, a will within her body seemed to truly begin answering her.
Deep within her flesh, waves of strength gradually surged forth.
"That's right!"
Zhou Yi's eyes brimmed with ferocity.
Am I supposed to admit defeat and give up targeting him just because he is a supreme genius with powerful backing?!!
That is how trash thinks!
Red Dragon Martial Soul: Exactly! Are we supposed to give up attacking just because he is the Dragon God's younger brother, the most ancient Dragon King, and the dragon race's first Criminal Law Elder?!
Charge!!
Zhou Yi seemed to have achieved resonance with her Martial Soul.
She abruptly became a crimson blur, her dragon claws aimed straight at El's head.
Huh?
But before she had taken two steps, she found her field of vision abruptly dropping, and her body instantly lost its balance.
Red Dragon Martial Soul: Sorry, my legs gave out.
The next instant, El's fist slammed into Zhou Yi's blank face.
"Even in this state, you still dare to attack me."
Watching Zhou Yi turn into a red spinning top under a single uppercut, spiraling into the air before crashing heavily to the ground, El sighed.
"I acknowledge your will to dominate."
Before you continue