Chapter 76 - 76 73 Soul-breaking Spear

76: Chapter 73 Soul-breaking Spear 76: Chapter 73 Soul-breaking Spear The trial ground was lush and dense, permeated by a decaying, damp odor, mixed with a whiff of fierce blood, while the howling of beasts echoed intermittently through the mountains, reverberating around. Ye Xuan, riding the Two-headed Demon Tiger, swiftly maneuvered through the dense forest. Five days had passed since the trial had begun. During these five days, Ye Xuan’s progress hadn’t been smooth, largely due to poor luck. He encountered few Princely Heirs and, after five days, he only had five trial gold seals in hand, far from the number needed to enter the ultimate contest. The range of this trial ground was immense; Ye Xuan hardly came across any Princely Heirs, let alone the three from the Jun family. As Ye Xuan maintained a steady pace forward, suddenly, he raised his head to look at several positions ahead, then he tightened the reins and stopped. A smile curled at the corner of his mouth. Ye Xuan pinched his fingers together and gathered True Qi between them, drawing a shattered stone from the ground to his fingertips. Then, he suddenly flicked his fingers, and the stone whizzed through the air like a bullet, heading towards a dense cluster of branches. A scream suddenly erupted, and a figure holding a crossbow fell from the spot where the stone had struck, blood streaming from the base of his palm where a spiral wound had formed. “Gentlemen, shooting hidden arrows isn’t something noblemen do. Come out now,” Ye Xuan said calmly, looking at the figure that had fallen without any surprise on his face. “A mere Fifth Grade Martial Master managed to discover us?” From two other densely leaved large trees, two figures leaped out, both looking somewhat incredulously at Ye Xuan, obviously not expecting their well-disguised ambush to be so easily deciphered by him. Before Ye Xuan, they had successfully ambushed three Princely Heirs; they believed there were barely five people in this trial ground who could see through their trap. Yet, when it came to Ye Xuan, he hadn’t made any moves and had still figured it out. However, if they had known about how Xie Cangsheng had been severely beaten by Ye Xuan earlier, they probably wouldn’t have thought the same. But since Xie Cangsheng had suffered a great humiliation, he certainly wouldn’t publicize it, and Ye Xuan naturally wouldn’t go around boasting about how he made Xie Cangsheng wet himself, needlessly drawing more hatred towards himself. “Your trap isn’t flawless; being discovered isn’t that surprising,” Ye Xuan said noncommittally. “Hmph, you discovered us in advance but didn’t run away. Instead, you approached us on your own. I don’t know whether to call you confident or arrogant.” Seeing that Ye Xuan was alone, the leader, a young man in a black robe, relaxed a bit and a cold smile appeared on his face. Even though Ye Xuan had seen through their ambush, they still had three people, which was enough to overwhelm him in terms of numbers. Moreover, the young man himself was a Sixth Grade Martial Master, and the other two were Fifth Grade Martial Masters. Together, they could challenge even a Seventh Grade Martial Master. The trap was just set for extra security. To them, Ye Xuan, merely a Fifth Grade Martial Master, was nothing more than a rookie. They didn’t even need the trap to easily deal with him. “Whether it’s confidence or arrogance, why don’t you come and find out? Are you coming one by one, or all together?” Ye Xuan smiled, seemingly without any sense of crisis. “Arrogance!” The expression of the black-robed young man darkened, clearly annoyed by Ye Xuan’s composed demeanor. Ye Xuan’s attitude suggested he didn’t take them seriously at all. A mere Fifth Grade Martial Master daring to challenge the three of them was simply seeking death. “To deal with someone like you, a minor character, we don’t need three people; I alone am enough!” The black-robed youth pulled out a black spear from his back and slammed it into the ground with such force that the spear’s handle embedded into the rock, seemingly causing a slight tremor on the ground. “Boss, be careful; this kid’s stone-throwing skills are a bit tricky.” The Princely Heir, who had his palm shattered by Ye Xuan’s stone earlier, looked at Ye Xuan with some wariness. The tricky attack just now had left a significant psychological impact on him. A tiny stone had hit him from almost a hundred meters away, proving deadly. Such a technique was not to be underestimated. “Don’t worry, I know you can’t guard against stone-throwing, so I won’t use it,” Ye Xuan reassured the cautious black-robed youth. “Haha, whether you use it or not, the result will be the same! If Wei Dongliu, known as ‘Soul-breaking Spear,’ gets defeated by someone a rank below me, there would be no point in mingling in the martial arts world anymore!” The black-robed youth laughed loudly, his heart already fuming with rage. “So it turns out you’re the renowned ‘Soul-breaking Spear’ Wei Dongliu.” Ye Xuan showed a hint of realization. Wei Dongliu was quite famous among the scions of noble houses, and his reputation for wielding the ‘Soul-breaking Spear’ signified he was no ordinary fighter. “Now that you know who I am, too bad it’s too late!” “Whoosh,” Wei Dongliu moved, transforming his entire being into an iron spear, hurtling towards Ye Xuan at breakneck speed. Sёarᴄh the Novёlƒire.n(e)t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. In the blink of an eye, the distance between the two had closed to just three steps. “Soul-hooking!” The spear technique shifted, and Wei Dongliu bellowed, the twisted black spear radiance appearing slow yet fast, coming from above in a nightmarish fashion that made it difficult to discern where the attack would land. Upon seeing this, Wei Dongliu’s two assistants immediately showed a hint of joy on their faces, reassured upon seeing Wei Dongliu showing no mercy and using his signature move right off the bat. “You’re defeated.” Wei Dongliu sneered inwardly, certain that one move was enough to deal with a Fifth Grade Martial Master. However, just as the spear radiance was about to hit Ye Xuan, the latter suddenly moved as well. He did not draw his saber but leaned back slightly, then suddenly kicked out with his right leg, striking Wei Dongliu’s black spear radiance with pinpoint accuracy, deflecting it away to miss Ye Xuan by a hair’s breadth without harming him at all. “What?” Seeing his spear attack so easily neutralized by a casual kick from Ye Xuan, Wei Dongliu revealed an incredulous expression. Was it really that simple to deflect his Soul-hooking Spear? However, struck with extreme shock, his movements slowed slightly. Ye Xuan sneered, and then his palm struck like thunder, landing on Wei Dongliu’s chest and sending him stumbling back, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “Heavy Prison Soul-breaking Spear!” After suffering a palm strike, Wei Dongliu regained much of his clarity. He quickly adjusted his posture, took a step forward, and burst forth with an extremely sharp aura, charging at Ye Xuan like a tsunami. At the same time, the black spear radiance grew immensely terrifying, continuously twisting as if painting the air black, seemingly capable of piercing straight into one’s soul. With the rushing air currents, Ye Xuan stomped his foot heavily, having already drawn his Star-cutting Saber. In the next moment, it was as if two streaks of saber light burst forth from his eyes, and he swung his saber in a straightforward movement, tearing through the air. Clang! The saber and spear collided, sending sparks flying everywhere, the sound deafening. In the moment of collision, Wei Dongliu’s body trembled, once again retreating in a sorry state, nearly losing his grip on his long spear in an utterly disheveled manner. Just as he was feeling extremely frustrated and wanting to turn the tides, Ye Xuan had already initiated another attack, and his Sword Qi fell like raindrops, his left hand continuously complementing his assault tactic, quickly suppressing Wei Dongliu to the point of coughing up blood. “Brother Wei! We’ll help you! One Sword Ling Chen!” “Heaven-shattering Strike!” The two Princely Heirs with Wei Dongliu could no longer just watch; they knew that if they didn’t intervene now, Wei Dongliu was bound to face a complete defeat. Sensing their attacks, Ye Xuan’s expression remained unchanged. He lightly tapped his foot, changing positions and leaping into the air. Then, he ferociously struck with his palms, his immense Palm Force resembling the Cloud Sea Waves, unstoppable like a river breaking its banks. Bang bang! Both the Sword Qi and the fist forces were crushed by his Palm Force, sending the two flying out like sandbags, spurting blood and collapsing to the ground unmoving. “How is this possible, you bastard, playing dumb to catch the cunning?!” Wei Dongliu watched in disbelief as Ye Xuan resolved the two with a single palm, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. How could an ordinary Fifth Grade Martial Master be so formidable? The strength of the person before him was most likely comparable to that of Xia Xingyun or Jun Wuming. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized such a person before. “It’s your own lack of focus, who can you blame? You’ll be passed out just like them for a while.” Ye Xuan closed the distance in three steps, moving ghost-like directly behind Wei Dongliu and slashing his palm down like lightning on the back of his head, knocking him out cold. “Time to clean up the spoils.” After dealing with Wei Dongliu and his two companions, Ye Xuan began to search their bodies, quickly finding the Demon Beast Cores and trial tokens they carried. He retrieved them all. Among the three, there were two Second Rank mid-phase Demon Beast Cores, but there were surprisingly five trial tokens, making Ye Xuan a bit sentimental that indeed, robbing people was a faster way to gather resources. The number of trial tokens from these three was all he had possessed before. With this, the number of trial tokens he had reached ten. Although it was still somewhat few, it had doubled compared to before. Having collected all the trial tokens and Demon Cores, just when Ye Xuan was about to leave, he suddenly frowned and looked in a certain direction, then saw four or five figures slowly emerging from the dense forest within his line of sight. “The person who could beat ‘Soul-breaking Spear’ Wei Dongliu to such a state is probably no more than ten in the entire trial field. It seems I misjudged you earlier,” came a voice. Upon hearing it, Ye Xuan’s eyes sharpened, and he focused on the young man in reddish clothing leading the group; his expression slightly changed, for it was none other than Song Peifeng, a Core Disciple of Green Leaf Valley whom he had met before in the inn at Little Stone Town.