Chapter 92: Control
Chapter 92: Control
At this moment, Li Yan’s situation was dire. Battling disciples from Spirit Insect Peak and Boundless Peak put him at a severe disadvantage, they simply had too much external help. It was as if he was facing off against two cultivators at once.
The Ghost-faced Horse was nearly equal to him in cultivation, while Zhou Guan’er was three full minor realms higher.
If not for the heaven-defying Guishui True Scripture, Li Yan would’ve long run dry of spiritual power and lost halfway through the battle.
Every increase in cultivation realm not only brought more spiritual power, but also made it more refined, enhancing spells with greater precision and exponentially increasing its power.
Even now, with his five spiritual vats endlessly producing spiritual energy, he was still running a deficit. Fortunately, the “Bone-clinging Maggot” from the twelve fractured poisons had not failed him. With full exertion, he was barely holding off Zhou Guan’er and the Ghost-faced Horse’s onslaught.
But his spiritual power was nearly depleted. Four of the ghostly flame skulls had already broken through to within five inches of his protective spiritual light.
That flying dagger was even more fearsome. Though released later, it had pierced through the water curtain faster than the skulls and was now only two inches from his protective aura. Behind it, countless creeping vines slithered forward.
Yet, all these weapons had undergone strange transformations. The ghostly flame skulls had swelled grotesquely, the closer they drew to Li Yan, the more bloated they became, now wrapped in layers of grayish water, with only faint green light pulsing at their cores.
The flying dagger had morphed into a gray “flying rod,” and the thin vines had thickened into twisted tendrils.
Zhou Guan’er was growing frustrated. Even after attacking someone four minor realms beneath him, he had yet to win. The poison truly defied reason. He sensed that after this strike, the flying dagger might be completely ruined.
Fortunately, the ghostly flame skulls and vines were formed from spiritual energy, they were only temporarily impaired. But if the dagger was done for, then so be it. Gritting his teeth, he decided: once the dagger touched Li Yan’s protective aura, he’d detonate it.
The explosive force of a self-destructing spirit artifact, even a tenth-level Qi Condensation cultivator like himself would have to retreat. As for whether Li Yan survived, it wasn’t his concern.
After all, in sect competitions, fighters were encouraged to go all out. Overseers stood by to intervene if necessary.
Still, Zhou Guan’er knew that deaths during competitions weren’t uncommon. Unless the victim was a core disciple, the sect rarely pursued the matter. Li Yan, despite having a Core Formation-stage master, was only a registered disciple.
What puzzled him even more was how Li Yan had resisted the poison from the thorned vines.
That toxin was meticulously crafted, once it entered the bloodstream, it would travel to the vital organs, inducing nausea, paralysis, then complete neural failure, eventually stopping the heart.
And yet Li Yan, apart from showing slight limping earlier, had exhibited no signs of poisoning all this time.
While Zhou Guan’er focused on breaking Li Yan’s defenses, he failed to notice that behind him over ten zhang away, in the patch of grass he had carefully avoided earlier where the grass should have vanished after losing Li Yan’s spiritual power, four or five clumps still remained.
These tufts were now semi-transparent, on the verge of collapse.
Zhou Guan’er had previously scanned them with his divine sense, finding only ordinary wood-element spiritual grass, nothing unusual.
Indeed, after Li Yan withdrew his spiritual power, the grassy patch had seemed to fade away piece by piece. This reassured him at the time.
Now, as Li Yan struggled bitterly to hold his ground, those final few clumps of half-faded grass suddenly transformed into motes of faint light, vanishing into the void.
Zhou Guan’er, pouring his entire focus into his attack, had all his divine sense and concentration locked onto Li Yan. To fully empower the flying dagger, he hadn’t activated his protective aura.
After all, Li Yan was trapped within his own water curtain, and this entire area had already been thoroughly scanned, he felt no need for caution.
But suddenly, a chill crept across the back of his neck. A sense of dread flared in his heart. Alarmed, he withdrew his divine sense and scanned his own body.
Nothing. No abnormalities.
He hesitated. Was he being overly cautious?
Just then, the Ghost-faced Horse let out an even shriller screech than before.
At first, Zhou Guan’er assumed the attacks had intensified but as their minds were connected, he instantly recognized the difference. That was the sound of genuine agony.
He turned sharply, only to see the Ghost-faced Horse thrashing its head wildly, as if trying to shake something off. Yet, the space around it was empty.
Then came another pained scream. Its eyes, once black and green, turned a chilling white. With a huff from its nostrils, over a dozen ghostly flame skulls shot, not at Li Yan but directly at Zhou Guan’er!
His heart seized with terror. The Ghost-faced Horse had clearly been afflicted by some mysterious spell or venom. Hurriedly, he withdrew one hand to defend, while still maintaining the attack with the other.
With a wave, a swarm of scorched yellow leaves appeared behind him, capturing and halting the flaming skulls.
But before he could check on the Ghost-faced Horse’s condition, Zhou Guan’er suddenly felt a spasm in his chest, as if a great hand had seized his heart and squeezed hard.
He grunted in pain, and before he could focus inward, that force tightened again.
This time, he screamed outright. Sweat poured down his body, and a strange energy pierced from the back of his neck straight into his sea of consciousness.
In that instant, Zhou Guan’er lost all awareness. The whites of his eyes surged outward, quickly engulfing the pupils, leaving only a pure ghastly white.
Zhou Guan’er’s gaze turned vicious as he scanned his surroundings. At a glance, he spotted the Ghost-Faced Horse. With a flicker of spiritual energy in his hand, a dense cloud of black arrows manifested in the sky behind him.
A single wave of his hand would be enough to turn the Ghost-Faced Horse into a pincushion. Meanwhile, far in the distance, Li Yan still concealed himself behind the curtain of rain, refusing to face either man or beast.
At that moment, a flicker of blue light flashed across the battle platform. Like a phantom, a figure appeared silently behind Zhou Guan’er and gently struck him with a palm. Zhou Guan’er instantly collapsed to the ground, powerless.
With his spiritual power cut off, the withered yellow leaves that had held back the ghostly flaming skulls lost their support. The dozen skulls howled as they shot forward, but the newcomer merely waved a hand, and they vanished into nothingness.
In the blink of an eye, the figure appeared before the Ghost-Faced Horse. His movements were imperceptible, but the beast’s shrill neigh was abruptly cut off. With a dull thud, it too collapsed.
Only then did the cloud of black arrows in the sky slowly dissipate.
The man swiftly inspected Zhou Guan’er and the Ghost-Faced Horse. With a frown, he sent two streams of spiritual light into the man and beast. Just as he turned his gaze toward Li Yan, his ear twitched slightly, as though he was listening intently to something.
Without hesitation, he grabbed Zhou Guan’er and the Ghost-Faced Horse and vanished beyond the barrier. Before leaving, he cast a solemn glance at Li Yan who was now standing as the water curtain dissipated and a voice echoed in the air: “Thirty-Three victory.”
Below, Li Changting stared wide-eyed in disbelief.
“He… actually won? But how did the poison on those grasses activate at just the right time? How did it know Junior Brother Zhou was unguarded at that exact moment?”
As a Foundation Establishment cultivator, she had noticed the strange dissolution of the final tufts of grass. Those half-transparent blades had clearly been sustained by Li Yan’s spiritual power. She couldn’t help but admire his meticulous planning. Even though she had previously suspected the grass to be part of a trap, seeing Zhou Guan’er carefully inspect the field and watch it vanish patch by patch had eased her suspicions.
Besides, the two had been locked in fierce combat, who would notice a few nearly invisible, seemingly fading blades of grass? It wasn’t until those few tufts burst into tiny glowing particles that she realized something was amiss.
Li Yan’s layered strategy earned her renewed respect.
What baffled her most, however, was how Li Yan had managed to keep the poison dormant without dispersing, only for it to explode at a precise moment. Everyone here could maintain an illusory patch of grass with spiritual power but to keep a poison hidden and then trigger its eruption at will was simply beyond belief.
Elsewhere on the platform, the cultivators who had been watching were in an uproar, voices rising in discussion. Most hadn’t understood what had happened, but those who had were hotly debating how Li Yan had timed the poison’s release so perfectly.
Amid the clamor, Zhao Min allowed herself a faint smile. As she had hoped, Li Yan hadn’t disappointed her. Layer upon layer of traps, and in the end, he had overcome the combined assault of the man and beast pair.
Still, even she couldn’t figure out how the young man had managed to control the poison so precisely.
Wang Tian and Zuo Shengyan looked livid, a cold aura radiating from them. The surrounding Spirit Insect Peak disciples quickly scattered, not daring to speak.
“Little Bamboo Peak! He couldn’t even defeat a low-level Qi Condensation disciple? Zhou Guan’er is utterly useless,” Wang Tian growled.
Zuo Shengyan’s face was frosted over, and the scorpion on her exposed belly quivered violently. Her snow-white legs seemed to pale even further in anger as Wang Tian’s expression darkened with murderous intent.
Back in his sector, Li Yan returned to his group, and Lin Daqiao was scrutinizing him from head to toe.
“Junior brother, truly remarkable. Remarkable!” he exclaimed with a constant stream of tsk-tsks.
Wei Chituo grinned broadly.“You’ve really improved. I didn’t expect you to hold back like that. Your underhanded tricks could rival Eldest Senior Brother’s.”
After saying this, he suddenly realized he might have gone too far. He quickly looked around and, seeing no sign of Li Wuyi, let out a breath of relief.
Yun Chunque, unusually, gave Li Yan a small nod of approval.
Gong Chenying’s eyes were full of wonder, as though she had something to say, but in the end she held her tongue.
High in the sky pavilion, the cultivator who had been overseeing Platform Nine excused himself as he saw the various elders break into loud debate, leaving behind a helpless-looking sect leader.
As he walked off, he couldn’t help but think of what the sect leader had said after examining Zhou Guan’er and speaking with the elders:
“It’s a poison that can be triggered remotely through divine sense!”
A storm surged in his heart.
That kind of poison was the things of legend. To be able to remotely activate a toxin with divine sense- yes, they could all do that. But to keep the poison dormant, hidden until activation? That had always been the impossible part.
Poison, once laid, typically began to disperse immediately. If it wasn’t triggered in time, it would simply dissipate. Worse, once it started to spread, a sweep of divine sense would easily reveal it.
Cultivators of the Wraith Sect had tried countless methods to suppress the scent and signature of poison, wrapping it in spiritual energy, restraining it with divine sense but such techniques would themselves be sensed by the enemy and put them on guard.
The ideal solution was to suppress the poison using another medicinal agent, one that was colorless, tasteless, and formless.
But even that wasn’t enough. The suppressant had to be compatible with the poison, and it still needed to be susceptible to divine sense activation. Meeting all those conditions had always been considered impossible.
And yet, today, he had witnessed it with his own eyes.
This kind of toxin was completely different from so-called “divine sense poison,” which used divine sense attacks to transmit poison directly into a target’s consciousness.
(Chapter End)