Chapter 91: Li Yan of the Wood Element
Chapter 91: Li Yan of the Wood Element
Li Yan’s first battle soon faded from attention. After Lu Qiutong returned and denied being afflicted by a Divine Sense Poison, many people's interest waned. After all, the Wraith Sect was infamous for its use of poisons, with new toxins constantly emerging.
Upon learning that Lu Qiutong had inhaled the toxin due to carelessness, most brushed it off. Moreover, Lu Qiutong deliberately omitted the strange effects of the poison he was struck by, he had no desire to provide others with a method to counter Li Yan.
This was something only he needed to know. He had lost the fight, and others would lose with him. Only then would he have opportunities later on.
The Qi Condensation tournament continued. Out of the 420 participants, only 108 would advance, an arduous process. To accelerate it, the sect adopted a method different from the Foundation Establishment stage, and continued relentless matches day and night.
Li Yan stood watching the crystal panel suspended in the air, silently memorizing the traits of each opponent. So far, he had fought four battles, two wins and two losses. The next match would be a crucial turning point.
His two losses were against powerful cultivators at the peak of the tenth level of Qi Condensation. Though he fought bitterly, he was ultimately defeated. The greatest reason was that Li Yan’s spiritual power was still inferior, those opponents were only a step away from Foundation Establishment.
What baffled both of his victorious opponents, however, was how little their poisons affected Li Yan. At most, he would become dazed or slightly sluggish in his movements before quickly returning to normal. Still, that momentary lapse had given them the chance to land attacks.
Another opponent, a ninth-level Qi Condensation cultivator, had left Li Yan somewhat frustrated. Li Yan relied on a relentless string of Qi Linked Branches and agile movement to finally wear the man down and take the victory.
Li Yan calculated the time until his next appearance. Night had already fallen, and the enormous moon of the Barren Moon Continent had risen into the sky. The dueling platforms were all illuminated by the glow of formations, making the battles within clearly visible.
Before long, one of the platforms shimmered with flowing blue light, gradually forming two lines of characters.
At the same moment, a voice rang beside Li Yan’s ear:
"Match confirmed. Platform Nine, Match Thirty-Three vs. Twenty!"
Li Yan took a deep breath, summoned his spiritual artifact, and soared into the air.
Wei Chituo and Gong Chenying said nothing, simply offering encouraging glances. Even Yun Chunque turned his gaze toward the crystal screen of Platform Nine, Li Yan’s recent performances had sparked some interest in him.
Under the moonlight, Zhao Min’s face, pale as white silk, carried a slight smile. She lifted her gaze to the moon. She liked speaking with the young man under moonlight. At this moment, the boy flying through the sky seemed to be gazing into the distant horizon beneath the moon, murmuring about the Great Qing Mountains as he always did.
After entering the blue shield, Li Yan flew directly to the center of the platform. His opponent had not yet arrived, this time, he was early. He retracted his spiritual artifact and stood silently at the center.
Moments later, a flash of light streaked from the opposite direction. As the glow faded, a slender young cultivator appeared several hundred meters away. He had delicate features, but the left side of his face bore a deep, ghastly scar.
It stretched from his cheek to his temple, the flesh still curled outward even after all this time, like a gaping mouth lined with tender new skin. The sight was disturbing. Li Yan had the impression that if the scar were just a bit deeper, it would pierce through to his temple.
Upon seeing this man’s face, Li Yan’s pupils shrank. He had recognized him, a cultivator from Spirit Insect Peak, at the mid tenth level Qi Condensation. He also possessed a symbiotic spirit beast: a mid-stage first-rank Ghost-Faced Horse.
Li Yan had watched him battle a cultivator from Boundless Peak. That opponent had been at the late tenth level of Qi Condensation and had initially gained the upper hand using a massive swarm of venomous insects.
But this man had instantly summoned a dense forest. The scent from the trees confused the swarm, which refused to leave the woods no matter how the Boundless Peak cultivator commanded them.
In the end, he was defeated by this man and the Ghost-Faced Horse working in tandem. Li Yan remembered that eerie beast vividly, he had even asked Wei Chituo about the man afterward.
His name was Zhou Guan’er, ranked among the top twenty in battle strength at Spirit Insect Peak in the Qi Condensation stage. This did not mean the peaks lacked precise rankings, but rather, each cultivator’s rate of progress was unique and ever-changing.
Moreover, both Spirit Insect Peak and Boundless Peak relied heavily on symbiotic spirit insects and beasts, and their uneven growth rates also affected the cultivators’ overall strength.
After Zhou Guan’er took his place, he observed Li Yan for a moment before suddenly grinning, revealing a mouth full of sharp white teeth. Under the moonlight, the worm-like scar on his face appeared even more grotesque.
“So you’re Li Yan of Little Bamboo Peak. I suppose I should call you 'Martial Uncle' but Senior Uncle Wang Tian told me to beat you so badly you can’t stand up. What do you think about that?”
Li Yan frowned slightly. He hadn't expected his opponent's first words to be so provocative. So Wang Tian still hadn’t let go of the fight between Fifth Senior Brother and Zuo Shengyan, he meant to take revenge on him now? Clearly, Wang Tian was narrow-minded to the extreme.
“Oh? Then come and try.”
Li Yan replied blandly, which startled Zhou Guan’er for a second, he hadn’t expected the other side to be even more arrogant than himself.
“Alright then, I guess beating up a so-called Martial Uncle is even more satisfying. After all, your cultivation’s lower than this junior’s, isn’t it? Hehehe…”
Zhou Guan’er let out a sinister laugh that echoed into the night. With a wave of his hand, a massive black creature appeared out of thin air, a strange horse, its body pitch-black adorned with bright red spots.
Its face was unnaturally shaped, with drooping eyes and nostrils that took up half its head. But its mouth was oddly feminine, small and cherry-like. The strange, unsettling visage sent a chill down one's spine.
“Let’s go, Obedient One!”
Zhou Guan’er swiftly formed a hand seal over his chest. Li Yan immediately felt his body tighten as a surge of danger rose from within. He leapt into the air, though Qi Condensation cultivators could not truly fly, gliding several dozen zhang was still possible.
The instant he launched himself, a sharp wail pierced his ears, it was the scream of a woman crying out in the night, shrill and harrowing. Li Yan’s mind reeled, his head spinning, and his form faltered in midair.
He quickly circulated his spiritual power to stabilize his thoughts. Just then, green lights streaked toward him.
Several grotesque, distorted skulls manifested in the air, spewing ghostly green flames directly at his face. If those flames hit him, they would instantly spread over his entire body.
Li Yan had seen this before, it was the Ghost-Faced Horse’s attack.
The horse’s small, cherry lips kept releasing those blood-curdling shrieks, tormenting Li Yan with splitting pain and agitation.
While it wailed, more twisted skulls sprayed from its enormous nostrils. These grew as they met the wind, swelling to the size of a human head in moments and all pounced toward Li Yan.
Gritting his teeth against the ear-piercing shrieks, Li Yan shielded his heart with his divine sense. Just as he was about to counter the green flame skulls, he suddenly felt a sharp constriction around his ankle.
At some point, several vine-like tendrils had slithered from the ground like slender snakes and wrapped around his leg.
In that moment of mental disruption, Zhou Guan’er had already cast a spell from the other side, ensnaring Li Yan’s ankle.
The next instant, a stab of pain shot through his leg, followed by a wave of nausea in his gut. Alarmed, Li Yan realized the vine had injected him with a toxic thorn from a spiritual plant.
He quickly swung his right hand forward, summoning a curtain of rain to block the approaching green flame skulls. At the same time, he formed his left hand into a blade and slashed downward at his foot, releasing a flash of cyan wind blade.
“Ssshhk...sshhk…”A few of the fine vines around his ankles snapped under the slash, but even more burst from the ground like crazed weeds, whipping through the air toward Li Yan’s legs like lightning.
Without waiting for them to reach him, Li Yan pointed down with his left hand. Instantly, the ground was carpeted with a layer of fine grass. These blades of grass, their roots seemingly interwoven beneath the soil, formed a tight underground net that ensnared the flailing vines and held them in place.
As both forces strained against each other, the grassy field began to undulate violently. Beneath it, more vines struggled to break free, but were forcefully suppressed by the binding grass.
Li Yan seized the moment and flashed away, reappearing more than ten zhang away. Yet, his movements had clearly slowed, some of the venom from those vines had already seeped into his body through his ankles.
Even after dodging the attack, Li Yan had to channel more spiritual power to maintain control over both the water curtain and the grassy field.
Meanwhile, the Ghost-Faced Horse in the distance, seeing its attack foiled, ceased spewing out green-flamed skeletal phantoms.
With a ghastly shriek, the red blotches dotting its body began to pulse and glow, then detached and shot into the green flame skulls. The skulls flared violently with green brilliance, now tinged with tendrils of crimson smoke.
In an instant, the skulls surged forward at an even greater speed. The water curtain, already wreathed in smoke, was thinning noticeably. The highly adhesive “Bone-Clinging Maggot Poison” that Li Yan had unleashed within it seemed increasingly incapable of holding them back.
Cold light flickered in Zhou Guan’er’s eyes. With another jab of his finger at the ground, the grassy field rippled even more violently, on the verge of collapse.
“So… your secondary spiritual root is also of the Wood element. No wonder you’ve kept it hidden until now, saving it for this final battle? A pity it’s only a support-type root. With that feeble level of spiritual power, you think you can suppress both me and Obedient One? Let me show you what the gap in cultivation truly means.”
As he spoke, he forcefully channeled more spiritual energy. A crackling burst echoed across the field as countless thin vines shattered the grassy net and shot directly at Li Yan.
A flush of red surged to Li Yan’s face as blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. Clearly, the difference in their cultivation was too great. He also had to divert part of his strength to fend off the Ghost-Faced Horse.
Thankfully, the spiritual power he cultivated through the Guishui True Scripture was far more refined than that of peers in the same realm, his mana reserves nearly matched that of a ninth-level Qi Condensation cultivator.
Zhou Guan’er was at the tenth level of Qi Condensation. Without the Ghost-Faced Horse interfering, Li Yan might have managed to drag the fight out and look for a counterattack, thanks to the Guishui True Scripture’s resilience.
But under Zhou Guan’er’s fierce onslaught, Li Yan’s control over the grassy terrain crumbled, and the vines erupted freely from the soil.
Seeing this, Zhou Guan’er let out a low, sinister chuckle.
“A low realm is a low realm. I haven’t even gone all out yet! If it weren’t for Martial Uncle Wang’s orders to make you suffer first before crippling you, I would’ve finished you off already.”
Despite his words, his attacks didn’t slow. He carefully stepped around the grassy field, he had no intention of ending up like Lu Qiutong and the others. Though the grasses were fading without Li Yan’s control, Zhou Guan’er remained cautious.
The unleashed vines thrashed even more wildly, some of them hurtling alongside the ghostly green skulls into the water curtain before Li Yan, causing it to sway.
Zhou Guan’er slapped his storage pouch with his other hand, and a blue flying dagger appeared in the air. He let out a soft command, "Go!”
The blade streaked forth in a streak of cyan light, aiming straight for Li Yan’s chest.
In truth, Zhou Guan’er was far from as calm as he appeared, his heart was filled with shock.
“This rain-curtain poison of his is truly strange… even more troublesome than protective aura shields. No wonder Lu Qiutong and the others couldn’t break through it. What kind of toxic substance has he refined into it? It even binds and entangles enemies. And his spiritual energy… how is it so dense?”
He repeatedly swept his divine sense over Li Yan, confirming again and again that the other was only mid sixth level Qi Condensation. Yet the power he exerted defied that realm, leaving Zhou Guan’er baffled.
Seeing the flying dagger hurtling toward him, it wasn't a low-grade spirit artifact and Li Yan’s expression tightened. Weapons like small flying daggers and needles were notoriously difficult to guard against.
Helpless, Li Yan poured all his power into defense, transforming the water curtain into a spherical dome that encased him completely. At the same time, he activated his protective aura.
But this came at a steep price, his spiritual energy consumption soared.
Among the audience below, many shook their heads with quiet sighs.
“That Martial Uncle Li from Bamboo Peak is about to lose. His strange rain screen can only protect him for so long. Casting both the water curtain and his protective aura at once… His cultivation is simply too low.”
A sneering voice added mockingly,
“With talent like that, he’s a martial uncle? What a joke. Aside from that bizarre water poison, he hasn’t shown anything remarkable.”
“But I heard he’s only been cultivating for a few years. To reach this level already… could you do the same?”
A graceful young female disciple retorted with disapproval.
“Heh… If I had a Core Formation stage master, you think I’d be behind him?” the man snorted.
“Then why hasn’t any elder or peak master accepted you as a disciple?”
Another chubby cultivator chimed in, siding with the young woman.
“Fatso, you trying to grow another three layers of belly today-”
…
Zhao Min stared at the crystal screen, a flicker of concern crossing her face.
“Looks like even the legendary ‘Fractured Poison Body’ can’t transcend the chasm of three or four cultivation levels. At this rate, Junior Brother Li is going to lose…”
Li Changting stood beside her, a mysterious smile on her lips. She gently pulled Zhao Min into her embrace.
Zhao Min glanced at her, then turned away, murmuring inwardly,
“I only admire how formidable the Fractured Poison Body is supposed to be. It’s just a shame he’s too far behind in realm… And you’re giving me that look?”
But being naturally reserved, she didn’t explain further.
In another section, Lin Daqiao saw Li Yan trapped within the water curtain, gritting his teeth to hold on. She clenched her fists, but could only sigh.
Wei Chituo also watched the crystal panel with worry.
“Junior Brother is having a hard time in this battle!”
He could tell that Li Yan’s expression wasn’t feigned, he was truly being pushed to his limit. His face had grown pale, a clear sign of spiritual energy depletion.
Yun Chunque, who had been watching closely the whole time, unexpectedly murmured, “He needs more pressure.”
Gong Chenying’s eyes were fixed on the crystal panel. Watching Zhou Guan’er cautiously probe each step forward, she shook her head slightly.
“The Fractured Poison Body can only buy him time. Once the opponent starts to adapt and defend against it, its effectiveness drops sharply.”
(Chapter End)