The moment the second puppet fell to the ground, the green-haired man's finger jerked sharply, and the remaining six puppets stopped simultaneously—not because their control was severed, but because they stopped voluntarily.
The six puppets remained in their lunging and slashing postures, like six sculptures whose pause button had been pressed; their joints no longer twisted, and the green light no longer flickered.
Feng Xiaotian raised his right hand and made a "steady" gesture. This sudden pause was not a loss of control, but rather a sign that the opponent was about to change their tactics.
In the shadows, the green-clad figure slowly withdrew his fingers. The green threads connecting the puppet broke one by one, turning into tiny specks of light that dissipated into the darkness.
He looked down at his trembling fingertips, then at the two fallen puppets below, and let out a low mutter.
"This batch of materials was already insufficient, and now two more have been wasted. They're really naughty."
He clenched his fists together and squeezed hard, his knuckles making a crisp cracking sound. Then he emerged from the shadows.
A ghostly green light illuminated his entire appearance as he moved.
A long robe, mostly rotten, hung on the grayish-white body. The arms were as thin as withered branches, while the chest and abdomen were disproportionately swollen, the skin stretched until it shone, and a faint green light could be seen slowly wriggling beneath the skin, like a snake crawling in the abdominal cavity.
He was barefoot, his withered, thin toes and fingers gleaming with a ghostly green fluorescence. His cheekbones were high, his eyes deep-set, and his cracked lips revealed uneven, yellow teeth. His cloudy, dark yellow eyes darted around rapidly—
The left eye moves quickly, the right eye moves slowly, and the focal lengths of the two eyes are completely different, as if they can simultaneously capture the field of vision in front and behind. The blood vessels around the eye sockets are permeated by green light, weaving a fine fluorescent net under the skin.
He stood at the edge of the upper corridor, looking down at the six people below. His gaze lingered on Jiang Lin's face for a moment, then moved to Feng Xiaotian. His lips moved, but it was unclear whether he was smiling or chewing.
"I admit, you're a little stronger than the previous ones," his voice was hoarse, "But only a little stronger."
He raised his right hand, slowly clenched his fist, and a ghostly green light spilled out from between his fingers, spreading down his arm to his shoulder and into his eyes.
The wriggling green light in his abdominal cavity climbed up his blood vessels, passed through his chest and throat, and illuminated two pure green lights in his eye sockets.
He grinned, revealing a sticky smile, and pointed his index finger at Feng Xiaotian. A ball of Soul Power, compressed to its limit, lit up at his fingertip. The air around the ball cooled down rapidly, and goosebumps erupted on the back of everyone's necks at the same instant.
"Is this how you use your wind blade?"
As soon as he finished speaking, countless eerie green Soul Power tentacles surged out of the sphere, densely packed together, and simultaneously stabbed towards the six people below.
This is not a chain, not a puppet—it is an attack he directly condensed with his own Soul Power, more than twice as fast and more than ten times more numerous.
"Stop!" Feng Xiaotian shouted sternly.
Lu Hanxiao had already flashed to the front of the group, his Third Soul Ring lit up, and the Cold Wind · Wing Slash was spinning rapidly in front of him, forming a rapidly flowing ice barrier.
A series of impacts rang out, the ice wall shattered rapidly, and was continuously repaired by his Soul Power. Su Mei'er stood three steps behind him, her right hand using the Wind and Water Confinement to seal the left side, and her left hand using the Wind Fire Bewildering Array to seal the gap on the right side, with red and blue lights flashing alternately in her palms.
Her breathing was erratic, but the Soul Core in her dantian was spinning rapidly, continuously supplying every bit of squeezed-out Soul Power to her fingertips. When the ice wall shattered, it was repaired; when the fire wall became thin, it was reinforced. The supply never stopped.
Ji Ning darted through the gaps in the tentacles at high speed, his afterimages scattered several times as he was pursued. The Soul Core in his dantian was also operating at breakneck speed, increasing his short-distance sprinting frequency by at least 30% compared to usual.
But there were simply too many tentacles; even with nearly 30% of them, he could barely survive. "There are too many! He doesn't need to aim, he can just overwhelm them!"
"Then he'll have no choice but to aim." Feng Xiaotian stared at the second floor. "Everyone, gather behind me. Single file—the facing area is only one person wide. If he wants to fight, he'll have to get past me first."
The five figures retracted in response. The countless tentacles, having lost their target, could only bombard the narrow frontal area.
Feng Xiaotian stood with his feet apart, the phantom of the Gale Twin-Headed Wolf flashing behind him and disappearing in an instant, his wind blade meeting the overwhelming tentacles head-on.
The dense impacts sounded like a downpour hitting metal. A tentacle grazed his left shoulder, drawing a thin line of blood. He didn't dodge; behind him were five teammates. Every step he took back would allow the tentacle to seep into their formation.
"Above your head! Three beams converge, prepare for a combined attack!" Jiang Lin's voice echoed in his mind through the projection of his Spirit Eyes.
Feng Xiaotian looked up sharply—three tentacles were rapidly intertwining above his head, twisting into a thick, green spear, the tip of which was aimed at his crown and plummeting downwards.
He didn't dodge; if he had, the spear would have landed in the center of the formation. He activated Gale Flash Step, taking a step upwards to meet the spear above his head. The wind blade collided with the spear in mid-air, the green light shattered into countless fragments, and the wind blade flew out of his hand.
Feng Xiaotian was thrown back by the impact, landing in front of the formation. The wound on his left shoulder reopened, and blood dripped from his fingers onto the ground, but fortunately, it was stopped.
After landing, he didn't check his wounds. His first words were, "He's imitating. He's using my wind blade as a template, but the tentacles he's creating can only pierce with brute force; they can't rotate."
He reconstituted a Gale Blade, held it in his palm, and let it spin rapidly above his hand, like a compressed blue top. "Without spinning, there's no penetrating power."
He turned to Lingtian and said, "Send a message to Senior Huo Xiao."
Feng Lingtian had already held the Communication Stone in his palm. With a flick of his finger, a short message was instantly sent out—not a cry for help, but a request for support.
Feng Xiaotian faced the green-clad figures on the second floor again. He took a deep breath, and his Fourth Soul Ring and Fifth Soul Ring, which he had suppressed for too long, lit up simultaneously.
He had no Soul Core, but his foundation at level 58 was released without reservation at this moment—the phantom of the Gale Twin-Headed Wolf solidified behind him, and the two-headed wolf's eyes opened at the same time, with four cyan wind pressures overflowing from its pupils, pressing fine cracks into the stone slabs beneath its feet.
The green-clad man stared at the two ten- Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring, and for the first time, the smile vanished from his face. His fingertips trembled slightly—not from exhaustion, but from excitement.
The eerie green orb of light condensed again at his fingertips, brighter and larger than before. The green light inside his abdomen writhed wildly, making him look like a lantern about to explode.
"Again."