"Argh!"

Sha Chen slammed into a cl.u.s.ter of those trees, his momentum breaking them apart and causing a shower of splinters to rain onto him. His whips curled and writhed uncontrollably as they sought purchase on the crumbling earth, but did little to arrest his slide.

"Ugh…"

A groan escaped his lips as he banged his head against rock-solid earth. Unlike the soft soil of the now-dry swamps of Toxic Marshes, the ground here was much firmer. Hitting his head against it would cause more damage.

Not that I cared.

Even as Sha Chen struggled to regain his balance, I was already hurtling forward, both my swords raised as I prepared to cut him down while he was still down. Some might perceive me as being despicable, but I didn"t care.

The opponent before me was formidable. I had no room to show mercy or fight honorably. Not if I wanted to survive.

"You d.a.m.ned brat…!"

She Chen snarled as he looked up at my incoming figure, only to be shocked when he was greeted with a monstrous visage. I had ceased all pretensions of compa.s.sion or mercy, and was utterly focused on destroying my enemy.

Gritting his teeth as beads of perspiration poured down his face, Sha Chen forced himself to get back to his feet. He yanked on his whips, which snapped out of the ground beneath me.

"!"

I noticed the whips coiling upward and escaping the soil they were previously buried underneath, but it was too late for me to alter the trajectory of my Jin technique. I could only continue onward.

Wham!

With his remaining hand, Sha Chen pulverized the ground in front of him, his metallic whip slicing through solid earth and throwing up clods of soil.

"…"
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If I couldn"t alter my trajectory, then I had just to evade all of the Heavenly Venom Kiing"s attacks while going forward!

For the very first time, I combined Jin with Duo, evading the whips as it lashed out and tried to ensnare or cut me. Weaving through its attack patterns, I slipped through the snaking whips and continued my inexorable advance at high speed.

However, Sha Chen was too much of a veteran to let me close the distance. With a single powerful strike, he smacked me with his whip, forcing me to cross my swords and parry the vicious attack. My momentum was halted, my advance foiled, as I leaped back with Tui to retreat from his violently thrashing whips.

"d.a.m.n it, I was so close!" I cursed.

Opposite me, the whips were wrapping around Sha Chen"s right stump, binding it to stop the bleeding. It wasn"t an ideal solution, but it was a stopgap measure to prevent him from bleeding to death. For now.

Grimacing his pain as he used part of his whip as makeshift bandages, never mind that a few drops of blood escaped the painful binds, Sha Chen gritted his teeth and glared venomously at me. Then again, he was the Heavenly Venom King, so what did I expect?

"Kuh!"

Unable to endure the excruciating pain of banading his own flesh with his poisonous whips, Sha Chen clutched at his stump, perspiring profusely. His legs buckled, but he somehow continued to stand despite his relatively frailty – given his age.

"You really know how to exploit my weakness, eh?" he growled in grudging admiration while he breathed heavily. "Waiting for that perfect moment when my guard was down…when I lost focus…"

I snorted and wiped the blood from my mouth. Ignoring the old man"s murmurs, I shook my head and sighed in irritation.

"…seriously," I muttered as I glared at the whip that was trailing in front of Sha Chen. "That whip is so annoying."

"Oh, shut up!" Sha Chen roared. I shrugged and raised both my swords in response, still trying to think of a way to eliminate his whips. Sha Chen, however, was having none of it. "Did you really think that cutting off one of my arms will change the result?"

As if to emphasize his point, he lashed out with his whip. Though, with just one arm, he looked like a joke when compared to before.

"Actually, yeah," I admitted as I watched him struggle with one arm in amus.e.m.e.nt. To be fair, Sha Chen was so skilled that he was still a dangerous foe even with just one arm left. Credit to him, his whip techniques were still as powerful, deadly and unpredictable even though he was only using one arm at the moment.

But I stood my ground and waited for the whips to approach.

WHOOO!

The whips howled as they crashed down upon me, like a many-headed hydra out to tear into my flesh. Speaking of which, I still remembered running away from that Hydra in Sen Lin Forest so many years ago. Maybe one day, when I became strong enough, I should go hunt it down. Not because I harbored a grudge against it and wanted revenge, mind you. It was because I wanted to test my current strength and see how far I had improved when compared to back then.

For now, I should focus on the battle.

"!"

While I was lost in reminiscing my past, the whips had drawn nearer. No, I already knew that. What I was taken aback by was their unpredictable movements, the whips splitting apart before attacking me from multiple directions.

I raised my head and glared at them. The lenses on my gla.s.ses were tracking their movements, highlighting their trajectories and calculating their speeds and ETA. I could probably make use of that information.

Before, they were too fast or me to pay any attention to the data flashing across my lenses. But now, for some reason, I had entered Fight Time. My senses were improving as the battle dragged on. Probably because I was using Heaven and Earth Formula for such an extended period of time? After all, Sha Chen was pushing me to my very limits.

And in order to survive, I was being forced to surpa.s.s those very limits.

"!"

The whips slammed down on me, blowing the earth up and engulfing me in a ferocious explosion. Sha Chen"s whip writhed about, continuing to poundd my location, until it suddenly went taut and stopped, its end still invisible inside the brownish smoke that billowed from the point of detonation.

Snap!

To Sha Chen"s utter shock, the whip was suddenly yanked in the opposite direction.

"Hm?!"

The Dark Sage tightened his grip on his weapon and struggled to hold onto it, his muscles bulging as he fought to haul it back. His feet sank into the ground as he resisted the pull, but he found himself unable to retrieve his weapon.

As the smoke cleared, he could make out my silhouette in the middle, staying very still. The opposite end of his whip disappeared into my shadowy figure. It was clear that I was holding onto it.

"!"

Sha Chen"s eyes widened.

I had unexpectedly drop Shadow Fox and was holding onto the whip with my left hand, having coiled layers of it around my arm. I had also wrapped a single coil around my right wrist, but maintained my grip on Azure Lotus Sword. Ice was beginning to spread across the Venom Iron Whip, encrusting the metal in a thin but growing layer of frost.

"How dare you grab my whip?!" Sha Chen roared, incensed as he he forcibly yanked on his weapon, trying to tear it out of my hand. I rolled my eyes.

"What, you can hit me with your d.a.m.ned whip, but I"m not allowed to grab it? What kind of logic is that? Am I supposed to stand still and let you hit me?"

"You can dodge!"

At least he wasn"t as shameless as the other martial artists. I supposed he was conforming to some sort of weird honor between martial aritsts or warriors – that we should never steal each other"s weapons. I could see that, but it didn"t mean I had to conform to it. As I said earlier, I was going to resort to any despicable means I needed in order to survive.

The whip arced upward as Sha Chen desperately tried to rip it out of my hand, but a few seconds later it went taut again.

I grinned.

Then I raised my Azure Lotus Sword and sliced through the whip. Not only did I cut it into two, the point of destruction was imbued with my frosty yin qi. The qi ran along the length of the hurriedly retreating whip, encasing it in ice.

The entire s.p.a.ce between us, using the whip as a conduit, billowed with a white fog as the temperature immediately plummeted. And it should, for I had unleashed Absolute Zero to destroy the whip at the subatomic level.

The frozen segments of the Venom Iron Whip began to crumble, breaking apart into icy fragments as my Absolute Zero began its destructive work.

"!!"

Sha Chen gaped as he watched his whip began to fall apart, and the ice racing across the entire withdrawing appendage.

"M…my Venom Iron Whip…!" he cried out in disbelief, sweat pouring down his face. Gritting his teeth, he gathered his immense qi and infused it into his whip. The arcane energies clashed against my frosty yin qi, and then began to push it back. Within moments, he was able to halt the destruction of what remained of his whip.

But a significant portion of his weapon had already been destroyed…

"f.u.c.k!"

Unfortunately, he didn"t have the time to dwell on it. He noticed me charging toward him, having retrieved my Shadow Fox. Holding both swords up, I used Jin to close the distance and slashed at him mercilessly.

Swish!

While I cleaved at him with Shadow Fox, Sha Chen spun to the side and barely evaded it. He then ducked his head backward when I sliced at him with Azure Lotus Sword. That cost him a bit of time and effort, however, and left him vulnerable.

With both my swords already used to attack him, I instead dug one foot into the earth and whirled around to deliver a roundhouse kick toward Sha Chen"s head.

"Ugh…d.a.m.n it!"

Sha Chen swore when he saw the attack, but knew that he was no longer in any position to evade. He was forced to block my kick straight-on with his remaining arm, but the power behind my attack was so strong that the ground beneath and behind him exploded, and the Dark Sage was hurled several meters away.

Crash!

The ground rippled from the tremendous force, disintegrating as a ravine was smashed into its face. Coughing, Sha Chen straightened up and threw his hand up at the same time as my next strike, armoring his remaining arm with what was left of his iron whip.

Just in time too. Azure Lotus Sword crashed into it with meteoric force as I executed Heavenly Draconic Meteor Strike, which obliterated the ground around us and toppled trees over. Shockwaves battered the both of us, throwing us apart.

"…!"

I managed to skid to a stop, bringing both my swords down and stabbing the poor earth. My body continued to shudder from the impact, and I heaved from the pain, my arms stinging from the colossal clash.

This old f.u.c.ker still possessed quite a lot of strength, even with one arm. He really wasn"t boasting when he claimed that losing one arm wouldn"t make a difference…

"Eh…?"

A suddenly sharp pain pierced through my gut and I began coughing out splots of blood. Staggering, I gagged as I clutched my midriff – or tried to, anyway, what with me clutching both swords and all.

"Argh…!"

Glancing down, I saw blood running freely from the wounds Sha Chen had left in my torso – the ones where he stabbed me with his whip, and one of them having been aggravated when he attacked me there again. You know, the time when he stabbed me in the gut and laughed at me, sneering about how nothing was more painful than being hit in the same place.

s.a.d.i.s.tic f.u.c.ker…

"d.a.m.n it…"

I could only stare helplessly at the large volume of blood I was shedding. This did not look good at all. At this rate, I might bleed to death before Sha Chen did the job.

"Ha ha ha!"

Even though he was in just as bad a shape as I was, the Dark Sage was laughing triumphantly. His body was still shuddering, so his celebratory laughter didn"t sound all that convincing, but he was genuinely delighted.

"Oh, I didn"t expect that!" he exclaimed, pleased. "I mean, I did know that you were pushing yourself to your limits to survive this match. But…by now the poison should have flowed through your entire system."

I glared at him silently.

"I don"t know if you"ve noticed, but you"ve been poisoned by the Black Venom Toxin ever since my Venom Iron Whip first pierced through you."

Dude, I knew that long ago. I just played along and fought normally. Actually, I forgot all about it, to be honest, since my system had already gotten immune to the toxins, but there was little point in telling Sha Chen that.

Let him believe that I was terribly poisoned and weakened. I could use that to my advantage. To feign the poison, I staggered a little.

"Just like your Master, your body will slowly be destroyed by my poison from the inside out, and your muscles and tendons will rot away."

Sha Chen was crowing now, thinking that he had won. I concealed a smile and allowed him to continue boasting. Let him enjoy his moment for now. He would never get another chance to celebrate his false victory.

"If you focus and meditate, you"ll be able to suppress the poison with your qi and slow down its effects, but obviously I have no intention of allowing you to do that." Sha Chen"s smirk was growing. "So don"t even think about escaping."

"I never considered it," I replied. From the beginning, there was only two outcomes for this match. Either I died, or he died.

The Dark Sage c.o.c.ked his head and studied me for a moment, then decided to dismiss my words as false bravado.

"I"ll consider the loss of my arm a fair trade for killing you eventually." He raised his remaining hand, his flaming qi igniting. "Let"s finish this duel once and for all."

While the senile idiot prattled on and on, I thought back to what Master told me when he was teaching me Heaven and Earth Formula in the underworld.

"You got poisoned by a Hydra?" he was laughing as he slapped his knee. I grimaced.

"Not funny."

"Sorry, but come on…you"re a disciple of the Heaven and Earth Sect…"

"Not yet," I interrupted. "I haven"t learned anything from you."

Master stared at me in shock. "Oh, right. I forgot you aren"t the typical protagonist who stumbles upon a skill after being trash, or conveniently has a ghost or spirit of a master floating around to teach him."

"Thanks to you, I"ve been through quite a lot," I grumbled.

"Well, look on the bright side," Master pointed out. "You survived Sen Lin Forest. You learned a bunch of techniques on your own. You fought a Ghost Bear and won. At your age. That"s already plenty impressive. You didn"t rely on plot armor or Deus ex Machina. You achieved all that without relying on some secret treasure or stumbling upon some ultrpowerful technique in the Dragon Medallion…"

"It has an ultrpowerful technique?" I asked as I lifted the Dragon Medlalion to look at it.

"Heavens, no!" Master burst out laughing. "Since when is reality so benevolent as to allow the main character to conveniently stumble across a secretultrpowerful technique? This isn"t a xianxia web novel, you know!"

I knew it. Well, I couldn"t say I wasn"t disappointed.

"But that"s my point. You survived this long and got this strong without relying on plot armor, Deus ex Machina and convenient plot devices. I"m sorry that I won"t be able to teach you for long, but after all you"ve experienced, and after growing so strong, I"m sure you"ll be fine." he nodded in approval. "I see that you"ve even learned some techniques from fighting the monsters in Sen Lin Forest."

"I can only hope that it"s enough." I shuddered. "The Hydra nearly killed me. Actually, I don"t even know if I"ll be able to survive."

"Oh, you will. That old hag already guarantees it. It"s not your time yet – your name is not on the list. You"ll be sent back after a week or so here." Master grew serious. "It won"t be long, but at least I"ll be able to teach you properly. The rest will depend on you."

I gulped. "I"ll do my best."

"Come on! After you learn Heaven and Earth Formula, you don"t have to worry about the Hydra. You won"t have to worry about any poisons again. You"ll become immune to all venoms and toxins!" Master laughed. "You"ll be the nemesis of all poison users!"

Oh, right. I recalled Zhang Wu Ji"s Jiu Yang Shen Gong – apparently the protagonist of Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber was forced to learn Jiu Yang Shen Gong in order to gain immunity from a poison technique that he had suffered when he was a kid. And once he had mastered Jiu Yang Shen Gong, he was immune to all poisons.

Apparently Heaven and Earth Formula was the same type of martial arts. It focused on internal strength and the development of pure qi over physical arts. Since I had been developing my physical techniques during my education in Wu Ling Academy, and even more so during my struggle to survive in Sen Lin Forest, it was the perfect supplement for my skills.

"Oh, and one more thing." Master suddenly smiled. "Watch out for the flaming poison guy."

"What flaming poison guy?" I asked, bewildered.

"During my youth, I fought against this guy from a fire-type sect. But for some reason he left his fire sect and learned poison skills. Probably to become the ultimate killing machine. He sort of saw me as his rival…"

That memory suddenly stabbed my mind like a knife and I gaped at Sha Chen, forcibly brought back to the present.

"You"re the flaming poison guy!"

"Excuse me?" The Dark Sage growled, sounding offended. Then he blinked before narrowing his eyes. "So your master did tell you about me, after all!"

"Yeah, well, he did…but…" I scratched my head. "He said it was a waste."

The Heavenly Venom King froze as he stared at me. Not caring, I continued.

"Master said that you were better off developing your fire skills. He thought you wasted your time learning poison techniques. He was more afraid of your flame techniques than your venom." I shrugged. "He said that unless you improved your fire techniques, he had no desire to duel you again…"

Voom…

I trailed off and froze, noticing how heavy and suffocating the environment had become. Gulping, I watched as stones, twigs and leaves levitated into the air, held aloft by the sheer force of Sha Chen"s qi. The guy was furious.

Tap…tap…

"Uh oh…"

I glanced around and saw that Sha Chen"s rage had even reached to the place where I was standing, with the surrounding rocks rising beside me.

"!"

DOOOOOOOOM!

The ground around Sha Chen exploded. My jaw dropped when I saw his qi warp and distort into a h.e.l.lish inferno so hot, so intense that the air actually shimmered like a mirage. The Dark Sage"s red cloak billowed upward, riding on the thermal. The old man"s body was shaking – not from the exertion caused by our fight earlier, but from utter rage.

"I was considering making your death quick and a lot less painful…" he began.

Liar. That thought never crossed your mind!

I could hear his teeth grinding against each other audibly as he ground out each and every word.

"But bring it on."

He exhaled a corrosive breath, his white hair all flying upward. His countenance was now a grizzled demonic mask, a ma.s.sive difference from the cornered old warrior from before. His eyes were actually glowing eerily.

"I"ll show you the real power of the Heavenly Venom King."

I watched as his explosive qi tore through the ground, resembling a volcano that was erupting furiously. The earth cracked and rocky debris was hurled indiscriminately in all directions. I could only watch helplessly as the destruction reached my feet.

"…uh, oops?" I murmured, feeling a little apprehensive now. Maybe I shouldn"t have p.i.s.sed him off.

"Ma.s.s Incendiary Bolt!" Sha Chen bellowed. His h.e.l.lish, blazing aura erupted and he conjured a gigantic fireball. Raising his remaining hand, he threw the enormous, flaming projectile in my direction. "Burn everything into ash!"

Oh dear. There was no going back now.

Grinding my feet against the ground, I stood firm against the terrifying onslaught. Wrapping both my swords with a maelstrom of qi, which made it look like I was surrounded by a typhoon, I prepared an ultimate attack of my own.

I could see the clashing clouds of qi, the lightning spark where they collided. I just had to slash there.

"Heaven and Earth Strike," I whispered. Even though I generally didn"t shout out the names of my techniques, in this instance it was actually helping me focus. By saying out the name of Heaven and Earth Strike, I could envision it better and manifest the technique in reality.

The golden wave of qi burst out of my swords as I swung them.

BOOM!

A deafening explosion seemed to tear the forest apart as the two colossal attacks met.