A bloody wind assailed the nose! Venomous fangs! The breath of death descended like an enormous net! Dark green poisonous mist surged from those pitch-black claws, spreading ahead of them with a pungent, bloody stench, seeking to numb nerves and erode Soul Power! Beneath his black keratin armor, Xiao Yan's face twisted like an evil spirit's, his eyes filled with undisguised ecstasy and the cruel delight of impending success! Little bastard! Die! I'll cripple you in the arena! No one will have anything to say!
In the stands, cries of alarm nearly lifted the roof! "My heavens!" "Teacher Xiao is getting serious!" "Those claws are poisonous!!" "Ling Feng, dodge!" Everyone from Dorm Seven had their hearts in their throats! Tang San's pupils contracted sharply, and his hand instantly slipped into his sleeve! Xiao Wu screamed! Shocked and furious, Teacher Zhou surged with Soul Power and prepared to rush onto the platform to intervene! It all happened in a flash! There was no time!
The venomous claws were within inches! They were about to pierce that seemingly fragile throat! At the very instant those dark green nails were about to touch his skin, Ling Feng moved! Not backward! Not to block! His feet seemed slick with oil! Improved Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track! Activate! His body shifted a tiny distance to the right, defying the laws of physics as though he had instantaneously slid sideways! Whoosh! Xiao Yan's lethal claws, infused with all his Soul Power, laden with deadly poison, and certain to strike home, simply whistled past the fabric over Ling Feng's left shoulder! The poisonous air stirred by the claws hissed, instantly corroding a small patch of fabric on his shoulder and exposing the tough flesh beneath-a result of the sign-in physique enhancements! Yet it could penetrate no farther! He missed?!
The bloodthirsty delight in Xiao Yan's eyes froze instantly! In its place came the shock of seeing a ghost in broad daylight! Impossible! How could he dodge?! That was a surprise attack unleashed with my full strength! The speed, angle, and timing were all perfect!
But that shock lasted only a thousandth of a second! Even as Ling Feng dodged, his right arm had already risen! In his hand was the Clear Sky Hammer!
Vrrrr-!!! The air once again gave a dull, trembling hum under an unbearable burden! The instant Ling Feng swung that pitch-black hammer, it seemed no longer to be ordinary iron, but a concentration of a mountain's weight and the earth's majesty! It tore through the air with a whistle so heavy it made hearts quake! No Soul Ring shone-the Hundred-Year Soul Ring's power remained contained within-and no magnificent light appeared! There was only pure, utterly tyrannical, terrifying physical force! Added to it was Ling Feng's inhuman arm strength, enhanced repeatedly by the Sign-In System! It also contained the force-generating technique of the "collapse" character, the very heart of the Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer! Launched later! Arriving first! This hammer did not strike at a vital point on Xiao Yan's body-his arms were extended, leaving his chest wide open-but instead, with extreme precision and an utterly unreasonable, overbearing momentum, smashed straight toward the crossing point of Xiao Yan's thickly armored arms, where his forward charge was fiercest! The target! His wrists! Attack against attack! A point to shatter a surface! Strength to break strength!
Time seemed to freeze at that moment! Every heart in the stands skipped half a beat!
BOOM-!!!!
Hammer met hands! The pitch-black face of the Clear Sky Hammer collided brazenly with arms coated in hard keratin by Black Rock Demon Lizard Martial Soul Possession, arms that seemed cast from refined iron! It was like an immensely heavy boulder crashing into a mire! Like a heavy hammer pounding an incredibly tough oxhide drum! A visible ring of distorted shock waves exploded outward!
Crack! A crisp yet dull sound of breaking bone, enough to set teeth on edge! Clear! Piercing! It rang throughout the deathly silent stands!
"Aaaargh-!!!" A scream so shrill his voice broke suddenly forced its way from Xiao Yan's throat! His hideous face, covered in black keratin, instantly contorted! His eyes bulged as though they would tear apart their sockets! He felt an unimaginable, savage force, like a raging flood and a ferocious beast, penetrate his body through the hammer! That force was not merely heavy! It carried a tyrannical will that swept through rotten wood and withered grass, smashing everything in its path! His proud black rock keratin armor, whose defense rivaled a Ten-Year Soul Beast's! His arm bones, as hard as iron and stone! Before this pure violence, they were as fragile as a crisp biscuit! His left wrist snapped instantly, twisting grotesquely! Heart-piercing pain shot through his right arm as well, its bones clearly cracked! His whole body felt as though an out-of-control siege engine had slammed into him! His forward charge stopped dead! The immense recoil sent him staggering backward like a kite with its string cut, utterly beyond his control! Thud, thud, thud! Every step stamped spiderweb cracks into the hard stone platform! Pfft! Unable to hold it back any longer, he spat out a mouthful of blood! It splashed over the inky black keratin, a shocking sight! Just one hammer blow! A Soul Grandmaster! Xiao Yan, under Martial Soul Possession! He had been brutally hammered backward! Spitting blood! Bones broken! The entire arena fell speechless! Countless shocked, vacant gazes fixed on the platform! Dorm Seven's cries caught in their throats! Tang San's hand froze inside his sleeve! Xiao Wu's little mouth hung open as she forgot to breathe! Teacher Zhou froze halfway through his rush as though struck by an immobilization spell! Sharp intakes of breath hissed from the academy leadership's stands!
Ling Feng stood with hammer in hand! His feet had not shifted the slightest bit! His unruly hair flew, his gaze as cold as winter ice and snow! The first blow landed! He did not pause at all! The second hammer blow followed close behind! It was still a simple, unadorned swing! But this time, the force was heavier! The speed was greater! The hammer's shrieking wind nearly pierced eardrums! He seized the perfect instant while Xiao Yan staggered backward, pain piercing his heart, his Soul Power and defenses fluctuating violently! The hammer came like racing thunder! The target! His exposed chest! Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer-Shock Character Technique!
"Aaah-!!!" Xiao Yan sensed a lethal threat! The fear of death instantly overwhelmed every shred of resentment! He forced down the agonizing pain of his shattered arm bones, his eyes stretched almost to splitting! Wild Soul Power poured without restraint into the keratin over his chest! There was no time to activate his First Soul Skill, Demon Lizard Venomous Fang Claw, so he could only defend with all his strength in the most primitive way! His arms instinctively crossed before his chest! The black keratin writhed wildly! It grew darker and thicker, attempting to withstand the blow head-on! I can block it! I'm a Soul Grandmaster! Defense is my strength! he roared inwardly!!
BOOM-!!!! The Clear Sky Hammer struck squarely! Without the slightest trickery! It smashed into his crossed, blocking arms! Into his chest, where defensive Soul Power surged wildly!
This impact was no longer the crisp sound of breaking bone! It was dull! Explosive! Like a boulder smashing rotten wood! BANG-!!!! Xiao Yan's crossed arms, their thick black keratin armor strong enough to withstand ordinary blades and axes head-on, collapsed inch by inch beneath the Clear Sky Hammer's incomparably tyrannical force! They shattered as weakly as rock strata weathered for a thousand years! Inky black keratin fragments mingled with flesh and bloody mist, bursting outward like black fireworks! Then, with the force of its swing still unspent, the hammer drove savagely into Xiao Yan's chest!
Pffft-!!! A great mouthful of bloody mist mixed with fragments of internal organs sprayed from Xiao Yan's mouth like a fountain! The terrifying force of the Shock Character Technique contained in that second blow blasted his feet off the ground! He was like a heavy punching bag struck flying! His chest visibly caved in! His eyes bulged, filled with boundless pain and incomprehensible horror! The defense he took such pride in was like paper before the Clear Sky Hammer! "Im... poss..." He did not even have time to finish the words!
A cold gleam flashed in Ling Feng's eyes! An opening! The third hammer blow came! His body was like a powerful bow drawn to its limit! His right foot stamped hard against the ground! Bang! Stone fragments flew! The tremendous reaction force propelled him forward like an arrow loosed from its string! In an instant, he caught up with Xiao Yan, who was still flying backward from the blow! His wrist twisted! Power rose from the soles of his feet! Passed his knees! Shot through his waist! Drove through his shoulder! Finally, it poured into his right arm! Into that black hammer that symbolized absolute strength! The entire movement flowed in one breath! Fast as lightning! Its power stacked to the limit! Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer-final strike! Break! The hammer descended from above as though splitting Mount Hua with brute force! Its target! Xiao Yan's already sunken chest!
"Let it end!" His icy voice rang like judgment! BOOM-!!!!!!! Bearing the momentum of wind and thunder, the Clear Sky Hammer slammed savagely into the space between Xiao Yan's chest and abdomen!
BANG!!!!!!!!! A terrifying, deafening explosion erupted on the platform! Under this hammer blow, Xiao Yan's burly, muscular body, covered in hard keratin, seemed to have been hit head-on by a speeding heavy soul-tool truck! His entire body shot away at a speed barely visible to the eye, like a black cannonball fired from its barrel! With a shrill, rasping wheeze like a smashed bellows, he traced a shocking, blood-red arc! He! Went! Flying! Straight over the waist-high stone railing at the platform's edge! He crashed hard onto the open ground more than ten meters beyond the arena!
CRASH!!!!! Dust billowed! Broken stones scattered!
The entire vast central training ground of Nuoding Academy sank into absolute deathly silence! A terrifying silence! So silent that the mournful sound of autumn wind slipping through the gaps in the stands could be heard! Time seemed frozen! The scene seemed fixed in place! The platform was strewn with shattered stone, spiderweb cracks spreading across it! At its center stood the black-clad youth holding his hammer! His gaze was icy! The hammerhead pitch-black! Slanting sunlight fell upon him as though gilding his outline! Outside the platform, amid the drifting dust, lay an enormous human-shaped crater! Faint, painful twitching and groans came from within! All the noise! All the discussion! All the worry! All the gloating! At that moment, that black hammer stained with blood-Xiao Yan's-and those three heaven-shaking, earth-shattering blows had smashed them all to dust! In the stands, over a thousand gazes were vacant! Frozen! Filled with disbelief!
Silence! Terrifying silence! A century seemed to pass! Yet perhaps only an instant had passed! From Dorm Seven's direction, "ROAR-!!!!!" Wang Sheng was the first to jump up! His face flushed scarlet! With every ounce of strength, he unleashed a heart-rending roar, breaking that tomb-like silence! "Boss won!!!!!" "Boss is invincible!!!" Zhang Tiedan roared along like a madman, his voice cracking! Xiao Wu leaped up in excitement, her little fists clenched until her knuckles turned white, her cheeks rosy, her eyes full of little stars of admiration! Tang San's taut body finally relaxed, and he let out a long breath, looking at Ling Feng with unprecedented shock! This guy... is a walking humanoid Ferocious Beast! Then the entire section occupied by Dorm Seven erupted! Then every area where the work-study students gathered became a powder keg set alight! Ecstasy! Screams! Roars! They utterly ignited the entire arena! "He won!!" "My heavens!!" "Three blows!!" "He only used three blows!!" "Teacher Xiao Yan... went flying?!" "Isn't he a Soul Grandmaster?!!" "A monster! Ling Feng is a monster!!" Cheers! Roars! They nearly overturned the sky above Nuoding Academy! The work-study students' shouts rang through the clouds! The frustration they had bottled up for far too long was completely released at that moment! They had witnessed what a true miracle was! What absolute tyranny was! Meanwhile, the senior students and noble children who had doubted, mocked, and gloated earlier were now as white as paper! Looking at that figure on the platform, like a demonic god, and at the enormous human-shaped crater more than ten meters away, they felt a chill shoot from their soles straight to the crowns of their heads! Fear! Awe! They were utterly submerged! This had not been a battle at all! This was crushing domination! Naked! Unreasonable domination! A Soul Grandmaster? Before him, he was nothing but a punching bag completely wrecked in one, two, three hammer blows! The might of the Clear Sky Hammer was branded deep into every soul!
Teacher Zhou was the first to react! "Save him! Hurry, save him!" he shouted, charging toward the crater with several equally pale-faced teachers. The Seventh Elder stood at the very front of the academy leadership's stands, his hands behind his back. Not a ripple of expression crossed his weathered face, his eyes like an ancient well or a deep pool, betraying no emotion. Only the few academy leaders beside him with the keenest senses faintly noticed that the fingers hidden within his broad sleeves seemed to... move ever so slightly? Or perhaps it was merely an illusion. He calmly watched the dust-filled crater and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Deep in his eyes, an exceedingly faint gleam flashed and vanished, giving way once again to unfathomable depths. "Clear Sky's offspring..." The faintest of sounds rolled deep in his throat, unheard by anyone.
At the crater's edge, several teachers frantically dug out the unconscious, blood-soaked Xiao Yan, his chest horrifically caved in and both arms twisted out of shape. Simple healing Soul Skills descended, barely keeping him alive, but his injuries were terrifyingly severe; he could forget about leaving his bed without several months of recuperation. The unconscious Xiao Yan was lifted onto a stretcher. At the very instant he was carried past the edge of the platform, seemingly disturbed by the deafening cheers, his eyelids actually twitched ever so faintly, and he forced them open a crack. Within that crack, there was none of his former arrogance and tyranny, nor the shock of his failed surprise attack, only a murky scarlet! Through that scarlet haze, he exhausted the last remnants of his strength and consciousness! His gaze fixed fiercely, like a dagger steeped in deadly poison, upon the back of the hammer-wielding youth on the platform! Bone-deep venom! Heart-burning refusal! Mingled with a trace of... fear that penetrated his marrow! And... utterly maddened hatred!