Seeking Truth with a Sword-Chapter 686 - 616: Fight Again

"Let’s begin."

In the room, Li Ang shook his hand, his expression stern and serious. Opposite him, Ati gently lifted the lid of the Lion Furnace, and immediately, a wisp of light smoke billowed out from within. This wisp of smoke expanded and spread, unrolling like a carpet to create undulating terrain. After the smoke enveloped the walls and ceiling, they vanished, increasing the space tenfold, even a hundredfold. Once the smoke cleared, the room had dramatically transformed into a blood-soaked battlefield. As far as the eye could see, corpses of soldiers clad in the armor of two armies littered the landscape. Foul blood seeping from the heaps of corpses collected into stinking streams, and flocks of carrion birds descended to peck at torn flesh and eyeballs.

Upon a nearby low hill stood the illusory figure of a towering man. He was dressed in the armor of a Yu Country sergeant, with a Broadsword at his waist and a Longbow on his back. Beneath his plumed helmet, his face was utterly cold and indifferent.

Their gazes met. No words were necessary; their resolve to kill each other was instantly clear.

Li Ang pressed a palm toward the ground, using Telekinesis to propel himself into the sky. Simultaneously, he raised the Radiant Crossbow, loading an Exhausting Talisman into its bolt groove. One of the Radiant Crossbow’s effects was to directly activate talismans, unleashing their power at a distance. Within the bolt groove, the Exhausting Talisman vaporized, transforming into a dense, torrential rain of fire that surged towards the direction the crossbow was aimed.

Yan Yundang’s Illusion stomped the ground, gouging a pit, and shot downwards like an arrow loosed from a bow. His right hand drew the Broadsword from his waist and slashed upwards twice in succession. Pure Gang Qi surged along the blade’s edge, carving intersecting paths through the rain of fire and forcibly clearing a space. The illusion sheathed his Broadsword, then with a reverse grip, drew the Longbow from his back. He nocked an arrow, veins bulging on his arms as he drew the bowstring to a full moon. The Fine Steel bow creaked, the hand gripping it trembling slightly, yet the arrowhead remained steadily aimed at Li Ang in the sky.

TWANG—

As the hand pulling the bowstring taut released, the string snapped back violently. The arrow nocked upon it vanished instantly, hurtling towards Li Ang like a bolt of lightning. This arrow, loosed at close range by an Innate Perfection Realm Martial Artist, could no longer be dodged merely with Telekinesis.

Li Ang opened his right palm, forming a conical barrier of Telekinesis before him, and deliberately angled the cone’s tip slightly below the arrow’s trajectory.

THUD!

The spiraling arrow struck the barrier. The Martial Artist’s Gang Qi clinging to it cut into the Telekinesis barrier like a razor, leaving deep gashes. Then, carried by inertia, it grazed past the barrier and continued its flight, skimming over Li Ang’s head, until it shot into the sky and pierced the clouds, leaving a massive hole.

Before Li Ang could readjust his levitating posture, a second arrow silently arrived, striking the barrier again.

Then came the third, and the fourth.

Yan Yundang charged forward, continuously closing the distance, drawing his bow and loosing arrows like a string of firecrackers, each shot unleashed with his full strength. He didn’t stop even when his fingertips gripping the bowstring became raw and his arms bled. Li Ang’s Telekinesis barrier had already shattered. Each arrow firmly locked onto his aura, and the Martial Artist’s Gang Qi imbued in them was potent enough to breach his defenses, forcing him to plummet downwards.

BANG!

Li Ang crashed back to the ground. He was immediately met by Yan Yundang, quiver empty and Longbow stowed, charging towards him. At such close range, taking to the skies again was unrealistic. Li Ang pulled the trigger of the Radiant Crossbow, launching a Thunder Strike Talisman. Electricity surged and lightning bolts danced, weaving together into a Thunder Net.

Yan Yundang neither dodged nor evaded. Instead, he hooked a soldier’s corpse with the tip of his foot and kicked it forward.

CRACKLE—

The soldier’s corpse was caught in the Thunder Net and instantly turned to char. The net itself was slightly deformed by the metal armor the soldier wore. Yan Yundang fully circulated his Martial Artist’s Qi Blood, forming a layer of Gang Qi armor over his body. With a heavy stomp, he leaped towards the deformed section of the Thunder Net created by the soldier’s corpse.

CRACKLE!

A louder crackle of electricity echoed over the bloody battlefield. Yan Yundang, smoke rising from his body, waded through the Thunder Net, closing the distance between them to within a hundred paces.

Are all Martial Artists monsters? Li Ang wondered, watching Yan Yundang’s Illusion force its way through the effects of the Thunder Strike Talisman. The intensity of that Thunder Net was enough to melt steel, yet Yan Yundang only had a bit of smoke rising from him? Was he human or a Gundam? Well, judging from our previous medical consultations, Yan Yundang was undoubtedly human. The reason he could power through the Thunder Net was because this simulated version of him was in his thirties, at the peak of his Heart, Body, and Technique before advancing to Grandmaster. His body had been tempered by the thousand hammers and hundred refines. And at that time, he had already caught the attention of Yu Country’s Ministry of War, which had imparted to him their most profound Body Refining Technique. The Gang Qi on his body’s surface was more than twice as strong as an ordinary Martial Artist’s.

One part of Li Ang’s mind processed this information while another part focused on propelling himself backward. Simultaneously, using Telekinesis, he grabbed nearby corpses and hurled them at Yan Yundang. The battlefield simulated by the Lion Furnace was extremely realistic. Each soldier had a distinct appearance and build, and the weight and quality of their armor were authentic.

However, when Yan Yundang began to draw his Broadsword and hack through them, the corpses were effortlessly cleaved in two. Even the armor they wore failed to hinder his blade in the slightest.

SPLAT—

Internal organs spilled from the corpses, only to be blocked by his Martial Artist’s Gang Qi. Like a Demon God, Yan Yundang carved a path through the hail of corpses, his Broadsword skillfully and coldly cleaving in half the body of a young, baby-faced sergeant.

BOOM!

The instant the corpse split apart, it exploded. Li Ang had secretly planted ten Blast Talismans beneath its armor using Telekinesis, precisely for this moment. The terrifying explosion created by the ten Blast Talismans leveled a nearby hillock. Heaps of corpses were blasted into the air by the shockwave, raining down in all directions. Severed limbs flew more than a hundred meters, startling the distant carrion birds into a hurried ascent.

As for Yan Yundang at the epicenter of the blast... he still stood firm, his hollow face expressionless, clutching the upper torso of a General’s corpse— In the blink of an eye before the explosion, Yan Yundang had sensed something amiss through the feel of his blade. He retracted his Broadsword to avoid damaging the weapon, simultaneously snatching up the General’s corpse at his feet to use as a shield, and infused it with Gang Qi.

Yu Country’s Body Refining Techniques were diverse and numerous. Gang Qi could not only be used to slay Evil, but also to enhance one’s body and weapons, allowing even hands and feet, as well as swords and blades, to break through talismans and disrupt Telekinesis. This was precisely why Martial Artists could contend with Talisman Masters and Magic Masters. When Gang Qi was infused into the corpse, its soft flesh became tough and resilient. The armor it wore then acted like a shield, absorbing most of the explosion’s direct force. The only price, it seemed, was that four fingers on the left hand of Yan Yundang’s Illusion were already mangled, the wounds deep enough to reveal bone—only this area had been struck by the blast.