Seven or eight puppets vaulted over the railing from the upper level and pounced downwards in unnatural poses.
They made no sound as they fell—no growls, no howls, only the cracking of their joints as they twisted and dislocated, echoing through the empty mountainside.
Death has robbed them of their sense of pain and consciousness, but some force has forcibly retained their ability to move.
The first to land was the gaunt Soul Master had escaped in. His neck was tilted to one side, his chin resting on his collarbone, and his eyes were still moving—but those eyes no longer held any of the spirit of a living person, only a thin, eerie green film covering the surface of his pupils.
When he landed, his knees bent backward, and he squatted on the ground at an impossible angle. Then he sprang up and lunged at Feng Xiaotian, who was at the front.
During the attack, his ten fingers suddenly extended—his nails had already fallen off, and the eerie green light emanating from his fingertips condensed into ten translucent spikes.
Feng Xiaotian did not retreat. He used Gale Flash Step to shift half a step to the side, and his right hand used Gale Blade to slash diagonally upwards, precisely cutting into the thin Soul Master's wrist.
The wind blades collided with the green light spikes, producing a piercing metallic scraping sound—the ten spikes were not severed, but merely deflected by the impact.
Feng Xiaotian frowned slightly. He had used seventy percent of his strength in this strike, which would normally be enough to cut through the weapons of an ordinary Soul Master. These puppets were even stronger than when they were alive.
The gaunt Soul Master was knocked back two steps, but immediately regained its footing. Its ankle twisted 180 degrees at an angle impossible for a living person, readjusted its direction, and pounced again.
At the same time, the remaining puppets had all landed and were flanking from three directions simultaneously—two burly men with bandit tattoos on their chests approached from the left. Their arms were thicker than when they were alive, and green light threads could be faintly seen flowing in their veins under their bluish-gray skin.
Three men in mercenary armor surrounded him from the right. One of them gripped a long sword in front of him, the blade Entanglement in the same eerie green light as the Green Man. Another man wearing a bounty hunter's hat descended from directly above, his ten fingers like hooks, aiming straight for Ji Ning's crown.
"Yue!" Feng Xiaotian in a low voice.
But Zhong Yue wasn't there. Shi Yan wasn't there either. This command came from Feng Xiaotian's consciousness—but all the Defense System were left outside. None of the six people who entered the passageway were purely defensive Soul Master.
Su Mei'er made her judgment the instant Feng Xiaotian uttered the first word. She unleashed the Water Wind Confinement from her right hand with all her might towards the two bandit puppets on her left. The Ultimate Ice spread a thick layer of frost on the ground, freezing the legs of the two puppets firmly.
The ice spread from their ankles to their knees, momentarily slowing the movements of the two burly men. However, their upper bodies continued to struggle frantically, and green light seeped from the gaps in their leg muscles. Fine cracks began to appear on the surface of the ice.
"It won't freeze for long!" Su Mei'er gritted her teeth and endured it.
On the right, Lu Hanxiao intercepted three mercenary puppets. His Cold Wind · Wing Slash drew three silver arcs in the low sky, slicing towards the necks, chests, and knees of the three puppets respectively.
The moment the wingtip struck, all three puppets were simultaneously covered in frost, their movements a fraction of a second slower—but that fraction of a second was enough for Ji Ning.
The Hummingbird: Pierce pierced the temple of one of the puppets, the high-frequency vibrations penetrating the skull, causing the puppet's head to tilt sharply and its steps to falter—but it was only a stumble.
It tilted its head, staring at Ji Ning with its eye still covered by a green membrane, then raised its hand and grasped the tip of the Hummingbird: Pierce, slowly pushing the blade out of its own skull.
Ji Ning's pupils contracted. "These things aren't afraid of fatal wounds!"
"Then cut their joints!" Feng Xiaotian repelled the gaunt Soul Master, and with a backhand slash of his Gale Blade, he severed the knee joint of the man's right leg.
The gaunt Soul Master's right calf dangled at an unnatural angle, but its movement was hardly affected—even with its knee broken, it used its thigh bone to support its body and continued charging forward, each step leaving a shallow, bloody hole in the ground.
Feng Xiaotian's expression darkened slightly. The fatal weakness of these puppets was not their internal organs, not their heads, not even their joints—they were still moving because some force was controlling them. As long as that force remained, they would continue to move.
"Eyes!" he shouted.
Jiang Lin never participated in the direct combat from the beginning. He stood at the rear, and the pale silver light of his Spirit Eyes did not look at any of the puppets—he was looking at the green light.
Every wisp of green light on the puppets originated from the hunchbacked figure above, like extremely fine spider silk, hanging down from the green-lighted figure's fingertips and connecting to the limbs and head of each puppet.
The dynamic capture ability of the Spirit Eyes clearly reflected the trajectory of every green light thread in his perception—the green-light figure was like a Puppet Master manipulating puppets, suspended on the second floor, using ten fingers to simultaneously control every movement of eight puppets. Not precise, not calculated, but airtight.
"These puppets aren't automatic." Jiang Lin's voice was low, but each word was enunciated clearly. "That person is directly controlling them with Soul Power threads."
He personally directed every movement of each puppet. Controlling eight puppets simultaneously—his Spiritual Power must have its limits. If he were forced to lose focus, the puppets' movements would reveal flaws.
How do you force it?
Jiang Lin raised his head, the pale silver light in his Spirit Eyes shimmering slightly in their sockets. "Let me keep an eye on him. He just said my eyes are very good—let him experience what it feels like to be stared at."
After saying that, he took a deep breath, shifted the focus of his Spirit Eyes away from the puppet, and steadily locked onto the green-glowing figure in the second layer of shadow.
He saw the green-haired man's fingers trembling slightly—not from fear, but from burden. Simultaneously controlling eight puppets was extremely taxing on his Spiritual Power, but he concealed this drain very well.
Jiang Lin projected this image into the perceptions of every teammate. In that instant, everyone saw the green-haired man's weakness—his fingers were trembling.
His Soul Power threads appeared to be impenetrable, but the thickness of each thread was uneven; they were thicker closer to his fingertips and thinner closer to the puppet. The thinner parts were the openings.
Feng Xiaotian's eyes lit up. "Cut those threads. The closer to the puppet, the thinner they are—can you cut them?"
Lu Hanxiao didn't answer, but instead showed his resolve through action. He abandoned his fight with the three mercenary puppets, his Snowy Owl wings flapping wildly as he swept over their heads, his Cold Wind · Wing Slash through the air in a precise arc.
Instead of slashing at the puppet, he struck at the thinnest green light thread behind it. The moment the wingtip touched the green light, an extremely cold Soul Power surged up from the wingtip, and Lu Hanxiao's arm went numb. But he gritted his teeth and steadied himself, and the wingtip sliced through the thread—with a crisp snap, the severed green light thread shattered into countless points of light in the air.
The mercenary puppet froze on the spot, then fell straight to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, no longer moving.
The green light quickly faded from its eye sockets, its skin returned to the grayish-white of a corpse, and its joints were no longer twisted—it had finally become an ordinary corpse.
From the shadows, the green-clad figure let out a low groan—not a scream, but more like a cold snort mixed with surprise and displeasure.
His finger twitched, and the remaining seven puppets paused visibly at the same moment. Ji Ning seized this pause, and Hummingbird: Pierce pierced the back of a bandit puppet. Feng Lingtian followed closely behind, and Peregrine Falcon Dive and severed the green light thread on the puppet's back with a single strike.
Another puppet collapsed. The green-haired man's fingers twitched even more violently.
The scales of victory are tipping in favor of the six Godwind Academy.