Chapter 89: Li Yan of the Water Element
Chapter 89: Li Yan of the Water Element
Even for a Qi Condensation stage cultivator, the distance of several dozen zhang was no more than a single blink.
Li Yan’s heart tightened as a wave of searing heat surged toward him,"Fireball Technique"! The mere heat from it was far stronger than when he used it himself. It was clearly a fire-elemental spell, the specialty of disciples from Old Lord Peak.
With a sidestep, Li Yan darted diagonally several zhang to the side. A fireball the size of a washbasin whizzed past where he had just stood, then shot off into the distance. Lu Qiutong’s eyes narrowed. "Arrowfish Ten Steps."
He hadn't expected one fireball to bring down his opponent. But there was too little known about this newly emerged martial uncle, so action was the only way to reveal his true nature.
Seeing Li Yan dodge using a basic movement technique, Lu Qiutong didn’t pause. With a wave of both hands, a vast cloud of fine sand was scattered into the air.
Just as Li Yan had dashed several zhang forward, the sky suddenly darkened. He immediately activated his footwork again, even faster this time. He had identified the enemy’s move as a large-area fire-element spell, "Raining Sand from the Sky!"
Each grain of that sand carried terrifying heat, and even a brush against it could bore a hole into flesh. A sweltering wave bore down on him, and then Li Yan caught a sweet scent in his nose. His heart sank.
“Not good, he’s laced the sand with the Piercing Lantern poison.”
This toxin, once inhaled, caused dizziness and fatigue; skin contact led to swelling and burning. Like moths drawn to a flame, it would invade through pores, spreading through the body, causing organs to feel as if ablaze, rotting from the inside out until death followed.
While moving, Li Yan’s body suddenly faltered. He had clearly inhaled a trace of the Piercing Lantern poison.
Even this slight hesitation allowed the blazing yellow sand to reach above him. His protective aura flared wildly as he held his breath and raised a hand, sending a mist of water upward to catch the incoming sand.
In an instant, water met sand mid-air. Steam hissed and billowed as fire met water.
Using the cover of the mist, Li Yan again slid away, this time a full thirty zhang.
“Water Cloud Pouch! Looks like this martial uncle specializes in water-element techniques.”
Lu Qiutong now had a hypothesis.
Given how Li Yan had consecutively used water spells, Lu concluded that in the face of urgent attack, the man had reflexively used the element he was most adept in, a natural reaction for any cultivator.
Although water counters fire, the reverse could also be true.
Lu’s guess was nearly correct. Of the five elements in Li Yan’s spiritual roots, water was his strongest. Against a fire-based opponent, it was only natural to counter with water techniques.
But what Lu didn’t know was, Li Yan had mixed spiritual roots.
Lu assumed that someone taken as a disciple by a Core Formation cultivator in the Qi Condensation stage had to be a dual-element Profound Spiritual Root.
If he could force Li Yan to reveal a second element, he could roughly deduce his combat style. Even if he couldn’t, he wasn't too worried. Li Yan’s second root was likely a weak one, good only for auxiliary spells, ideal for support or sneak attacks.
He only needed to watch for spatial fluctuations while attacking.
Just as Li Yan cast Water Cloud Pouch and dodged again, Lu Qiutong reappeared at the former combat point and lashed out with a palm but struck only empty air.
Seeing Li Yan avoiding direct confrontation and dodging constantly, Lu patted his waist. With a flash of light, a string of six purple spiritual beads, resembling grape-like ovals, floated into the air.
Once airborne, they dispersed. Three formed a triangle and shot straight at Li Yan’s face and chest, while the other three broke off, circling to flank his sides and rear, aiming to completely encircle him.
Li Yan's body flickered, reappearing ten zhang to the side. His expression was grave. He had not escaped the encirclement, and those six purple spirit beads were now only a few zhang away howling toward him.
With no time left to dodge, Li Yan’s face tightened.
His storage pouch contained only the basic sword issued by the sect, hardly enough to defend against this kind of spiritual artifact assault. They came from four directions. He spun in place, and as his body rotated, his protective aura flared to maximum brightness.
At the same time, a curtain of rain shot outward from the aura, he meant to use the rain's density to blunt the incoming attacks. If it couldn’t block them completely, it could at least weaken the blow, leaving his protective aura to absorb the rest.
Seeing this, Lu Qiutong smiled faintly. This was exactly what he had hoped for, forcing Li Yan into a direct clash. If water countered fire, then the winner would be decided by raw magical power.
And as someone at late ninth level Qi Condensation, overpowering a sixth level opponent was just the quickest path to victory. Forget “unfairness" this was a tournament. Winning mattered most.
He still had many tricks left, not to mention the poisons he was skilled with but those would require more time and effort.
The Piercing Lantern poison used earlier had already dulled Li Yan’s movements a bit, but the young man had identified it and escaped in time. That poison had been just a standard test, Li Yan clearly had some resistance to it.
In the sections beneath the crystal viewing panels, not many were watching Li Yan’s platform. Most spectators were focused on their favorite contestants.
“Little junior brother seems to be in danger. That guy is going all-out with direct force.”
Lin Daqiao was closely watching the panel.
“Junior brother hasn’t lost his composure yet. There might still be a chance. These past few days of sparring, I feel he hasn’t shown his full strength, even though he often got beaten badly.”
Wei Chituo, a veteran of many battles, stared at the panel with a serious expression. But deep down, he was worried whether Li Yan could survive this fierce onslaught.
Gong Chenying’s beautiful eyes stayed on the crystal panel. She said nothing but occasionally furrowed her brows, lost in thought.
Yun Chunque, by contrast, was focused on another battle platform as if he didn’t care about Li Yan at all.
And in another part of the viewing area...
“Oh my, Lu Qiutong really has a good eye, he spotted Junior Brother Li’s weakness at a glance and is suppressing him directly with his superior cultivation.”
Li Changting clicked her tongue in admiration, then glanced at Zhao Min.
Zhao Min’s expression remained indifferent, with no change in demeanor. She simply stared at the crystal panel, thinking to herself:“Could the Fractured Poison Body be defeated so easily? Then what about that rumored ability to battle those at higher realms?”
Inside the floating pavilion, Elder Yan Longzi stroked his beard. He seemed rather satisfied with this disciple of his peak. Despite being unaware of the opponent’s background, Lu Qiutong had cautiously begun with probing attacks.
Then, in a very short time, he had identified the opponent’s spiritual root and decisively opted for the most straightforward method, suppression by sheer cultivation level.
“Let’s see how Li Yan responds to this now,” he thought silently. The other elders watching the crystal panel had their eyes half-lidded, saying nothing.
Lu Qiutong watched as the six purple grape-like spiritual orbs entered the rain curtain released by Li Yan, and his heart settled.
Though “Water Curtain Technique” was a good defensive method, it still depended on the opponent. Using his own spiritual power to attack, Li Yan’s rain screen would amount to nothing more than a futile resistance.
But in the very next moment, a trace of unease rippled through his divine sense. As the six orbs pierced into the rain curtain, it felt as if they had entered a dense viscous liquid, nothing like the smooth impact he had anticipated of striking directly at the opponent’s protective aura.
“Hm? What’s going on?”
He could sense it wasn’t the opponent’s spiritual power blocking the orbs. If Li Yan’s spiritual power was truly that profound, the orbs would’ve been repelled or entangled in rainwater outright.
But no, his divine sense clearly told him that Li Yan’s power was far weaker. Even so, while the six orbs continued pushing forward, the rain droplets kept clinging to their surfaces, making the orbs larger and increasingly sluggish.
“There’s something strange about these raindrops...?”
Startled, Lu Qiutong surged more power into his orbs. They sped up slightly but only advanced a few more feet before swelling further and slowing once again.
“Poison. A highly adhesive poison!”
Poison was no stranger to Lu Qiutong. He’d seen plenty of it, countless varieties.
Yet only a few types ever used water-based adhesion. And even now, using his divine sense, he couldn’t tell which it was. But he guessed it might corrode the orbs’ inherent spiritual nature.
His heart clenched. Seeing his attack was ineffective, he quickly decided to retrieve the orbs before prolonged exposure degraded them further, any more and it would be a serious loss.
That string of purple grape-like orbs had cost him forty spirit stones and were his most potent tools for direct attack.
He poured more power in to recall them swiftly.
As they streaked back through the rain curtain at high speed, he was surprised.
“Was I mistaken?”
He eased up on the spiritual force again, trying another forward thrust but the six orbs only advanced a few inches into the rain curtain before slowing once more, swelling further in size. He became even more uncertain about the poison’s nature.
Lu Qiutong recalled them once again. This time, they returned without resistance. When they hovered about ten feet before him, he didn’t immediately absorb them back into storage.
By now, the six spiritual orbs were better described as spiritual spheres, each one having swelled four or five times in size. A dull gray watery film coated their surfaces, giving them a lifeless appearance.
Lu Qiutong dared not touch them directly. He was certain he had never encountered this poison before, even after over a decade of alchemy and poison crafting. He estimated it might take months of nurturing to restore the orbs to their former state.
Opposite him, Li Yan had retracted the rain curtain, though his protective aura still flickered about him, clearly wary of a sudden counterattack.
Lu Qiutong glanced at Li Yan. As he was considering how to store the damaged orbs and plan his next move, he suddenly felt a heavy pressure in his chest. His head felt like it had been filled with molten lead.
Startled, he realized his body was no longer under his control and fell flat on his back.
As he collapsed, a final thought flashed through his mind:
“A poison master of the water element… someone able to integrate poison and cast spells beyond their level.”
This wasn’t just ordinary poison-crafting, it required a deep understanding of both water-element spells and the specific toxins used.
The bizarre scene sent ripples of shock through the onlooking cultivators. From start to finish, it had appeared Lu Qiutong was the one on the offensive, while Li Yan had only defended.
Yet in the end, after retrieving his orbs, without even touching them Lu Qiutong collapsed.
“Senior Brother, what kind of poison is that? I’ve never seen it.”
A disciple from Old Lord Peak asked someone beside him.
The senior brother also looked puzzled.
“It resembles something I’ve seen before, similar in form but that was a metallic poison, typically used on blades and swords.”
Another cultivator from Old Lord Peak chimed in.
“But Senior Brother Lu never touched the orbs. How did he get poisoned?”
Since Lu Qiutong was fighting, quite a few Old Lord Peak disciples were watching this match.
“Could it be Divine Sense Poison? They say anything contaminated with it, if scanned with divine sense, will transmit the poison directly. It’s colorless, tasteless…”
“Divine Sense Poison? Impossible. That kind is said to be manipulable only at the Nascent Soul stage. And the materials needed to make it shouldn't even exist in the world. How could he obtain it?”
“Who is this person? I’ve never seen him before…”
Li Changting stared at the crystal panel, face grave, murmuring to herself:
“Divine Sense Poison… could the Fractured Poison Body produce such a terrifying toxin on its own?”
Zhao Min, however, remained focused on the crystal panel, where the young man was just now retracting his protective aura. She thought:
“Whether it’s Divine Sense Poison or not, to deploy it under so many eyes and not be detected, this is one of the Three Great Poison Bodies.”
“What method did Little Junior Brother use? I didn’t catch it at all.”
On the other side, Lin Daqiao scratched his head and looked at Wei Chituo and the others. Wei and Gong Chenying exchanged glances, equally perplexed. They hadn’t been able to tell how Li Yan deployed the poison either.
Up in the floating pavilion…
“That’s not Divine Sense Poison,” Yan Longzi declared.
(Chapter End)