"Instant kill!"

The Cat King of the North fired his commentary so rapidly that it was difficult to catch each of his words.

"The Explosive Man was finished with an instant kill! We just saw Daniel Wu"s one-hit KO bring one of the compet.i.tion"s most powerful contenders to his knees. He looks like he"s out cold. I"m sure he"ll regain consciousness soon, so let"s turn our attention back to Daniel. It"s obvious that invisibility is not his only power. Sure looks like he had concealed his true strength in the first round of the compet.i.tion."

An uproar erupted from the elimination zone. Everyone had something to say about what they had just witnessed.

"The Explosive Man was defeated just like that?"

"What the h.e.l.l even happened? Could he resist the Telekinetic Knights as well?"

"That was mad fast! Daniel Wu is insanely fast!"

"Jesus," Fish Ball muttered to himself, "He"s that good?"

He might be acquaintances with Zhao Yao, but he was unfamiliar with the depth of his abilities.

He turned to the gawking female cats next to him.

"He"s good, isn"t he? That"s my disciple over there. I"m the one who sent him into the compet.i.tion," he boasted.

In the woods, the hush that had fallen over the contestants was slowly lifted. They looked at each other, then started closing in on Zhao Yao again, tentatively this time.

There was no denying that he was powerful, but even the greatest apostle would be unable to face off 80 others at once.

The odds were not in his favor at all.

Every contestant thought this way, but no one dared to make the first move. The Explosive Man took the lead and look what became of him.

Since they could not thrash him, they talked trash instead.

"Daniel Wu!" someone called out, "You might be skilled, but that"s not going to save you now. Look around you. There"s too many of us for you to beat."

"Yeah! Come on, lads, we needn"t be afraid of him! We outnumber him 80 to one. We just need to unleash one superpower each to destroy him completely."

"Daniel Wu, if you want to leave this place in one piece, you better hand over the sapphires now."

Yue Shan remained silent while his fellow contestants hurled one insult after another. He narrowed his eyes, considering his next move.

His power had nothing to do with the body. It lay in his mind.

Physically, he was as defenseless and weak as the next man on the street. Watching Explosive Man get plummeted into the dirt was a timely reminder that he had to protect himself before he could think about attacking.

Yue Shan wrapped himself in a telekinetic s.h.i.+eld that would block all kinds of physical damage.

Then, he struck.

He used his power to bind Zhao Yao"s limbs together, paralyzing him.

"Gotcha!"

Yue Shan intended to yank him forward and s.n.a.t.c.h the sapphires.

But, in the next moment, Zhao Yao was gone.

"Turned invisible, huh?" Yue Shan thought.

It did not matter. Visible or not, Zhao Yao was in his telekinetic grip. He pulled his target towards him in one swift motion, igniting a chain of loud booms and bringing to him...nothing?

n.o.body knew that when Zhao Yao was seized, he had become invisible, then promptly swallowed himself into the extradimensional belly.

"He"s invisible again!"

"Be alert! He"s up to something!"

Zhao Yao"s disappearing act had raised the tension among the contestants. They cast their powers haphazardly, hoping to hit him, wherever he was.

It was futile.

As Zhao Yao stepped back into the real world, Roly Poly in tow, it had gone completely still.

"TimeFreeze!"

Zhao Yao surveyed the woods quickly. He could remember where Yue Shan had been standing.

That was where he headed with impossibly nimble steps.

In the past, Zhao Yao would have to put on that regretful princess dress or activate the supercat armor in order to battle so many apostles at once.

Now, things were different (thankfully).

Matcha had reached level six and the nature of his power had evolved.

Everything had multiplied by

by six times. He was six times stronger during TimeFreeze. He could use each second as if it was six seconds.

With that up his a.r.s.enal, big numbers no longer posed too large a threat. He had all the time in the world to take them down one by one.

Yue Shan"s telekinesis, however, was a much bigger problem. He could sneak up on Zhao Yao even if he was a distance away.

This was why Zhao Yao had to take care of him first.

Once he landed before Yue Shan, he threw punch after punch against his stomach.

The force field stood st.u.r.dily between Zhao Yao"s fists and Yue Shan"s skin. It protected Yue Shan and cus.h.i.+oned most, but not all, the impact.

Zhao Yao kept going. He continued to ram his fists into Yue Shan.

He was endowed with the combined power of four cats now. Coupled with his long-term exposure to the Celestial Beats and his training, he was as fit as an Olympic boxer.

And what happens when an Olympic boxer could punch six times faster?

Each hit would feel like the blow of Hercules hammering against steel.

No one could catch the barrage of punches that Zhao Yao rained on Yue Shan.

When time started ticking again, all they saw was that he appeared before Yue Shan and swiftly delivered an epic punch to his stomach.

It might have looked like one punch, but it contained the immense energy of every single blow made when time stopped. A rapid succession of booms could be heard as they wore the force field down, before rupturing it completely.

Yue Shan was thrown off his feet and into the air, cras.h.i.+ng onto the ground at neck-breaking speed ten meters away. When he rolled to a stop, he was out cold.

Zhao Yao nodded with satisfaction.

"That was the perfect amount of strength."

He turned to face the rest of the startled contestants and said, "I suggest that those of you who can"t even handle one of my punches to leave me be. If we end up fighting, I might accidentally kill you."

With that, he disappeared again, this time with the help of Roly Poly"s invisibility.

"Be careful!"

"He"s going to attack again!"

"Come, we"ve got to stay together!"

The apostles began to huddle around each other in a tight circle, hoping desperately to find safety in numbers.

No one would have expected that Zhao Yao would appear in the midst of the crowd. When he did, he was accompanied by a blast of air and the sound of rumbling thunder.

Those in the crowd were knocked off their feet and sent flying. Half of them had lost consciousness even before they fell to the ground with a loud thud.

Then, Zhao Yao disappeared again.

He repeated this performance a few times. He was like a grenade that would detonate wherever he appeared, sending cats and apostles into the air.

"We"ve got to stop sticking together!"

Boom.

"Disperse! We must disperse! We can"t keep staying in the same places."

"He"s coming!"

Kaboom.

"He"s there! He"s right there!"

"Hey! I"m one of you, get off me!"

"Those with the strongest defence should stay at the circ.u.mference!"

The crowd had descended into pandemonium. Everyone was panicking, very much like a helpless herd of sheep being cornered by a big, bad wolf.

They were unable to formulate a proper strategy against Zhao Yao, so he could continue to creep into their midst and fling them through the air.

Metal Man, Rubber Man, and the few apostles who had their wits around them would try to seize him every time he appeared, but they could scarcely graze him with their fingertips before he vanished again.

They still had no clue that they had been led into Zhao Yao"s carefully selected battlefield. This flat expanse of land allowed him a bird"s eye view of every contestant"s location. There was no hiding from him.

"Unbelievable. This is simply unbelievable!" the Cat King of the North exclaimed, "Daniel Wu is actually wiping out all the contestants single-handedly. Not one of them has been able to return his blows. This is a 1 vs 80 battle for the ages. I cannot believe my eyes."

The feverish commotion in the elimination zone continued to grow louder.

The captive audience had seen some amazing things today. They had thought that Explosive Man"s destructive detonations were powerful, as was Yue Shan"s valianceYue Shan"s valiance and Chimera"s fire dragons.

However, it seemed like they had seen nothing yet. Until now, that is.

Zhao Yao had shown them a whole new world. He had given them a taste of what true power looked like.

He had squashed 80 contestants as easily as ants with his thumb. None of them could even attempt to fight back.

This was an epiphany for apostles and supercats alike.

Zhao Yao had proven to them that the world really had changed.

Fish Ball had leapt away from Zhi Yun and joined the female cats that were huddled together.

He pointed his paw at Zhao Yao"s magnificent figure on the screen.

"What you see here is all my work," he started, "I helped him lose 120 pounds in six months through tireless training. His strength is now absolutely unparalleled! If I hadn"t stepped into his life, he would still be the same fat otaku he had always been."

The cats" eyes lit up with awe as they looked at Fish Ball.

"Wow, you"re amazing!" they sang in unison.

Fish Ball waved them off casually, "It"s nothing. I"ve only imparted to him half of what I know. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve to teach him."

While he was busy boasting, Zhi Yun was gaping at the screen.

"I never thought that our powers could be this...devastating…"

Zhao Yao continued to make his rounds through the arena, knocking out contestant after contestant.

As the crowd thinned, it became easy to spot a masked man that remained cool and collected among the flurry of panic surrounding him.

He was keenly observing Zhao Yao.

When Zhao Yao landed before him, he threw another tremendous punch that sent everyone in the area flying limply through the air.

Everyone, that is, except for the masked man.

Only he remained on his feet.

In the next moment, he had his hand around Zhao Yao"s neck, holding it in a painful vice grip.

"I"ve finally got you, Headless Horseman."