Chapter 4802 — A Fierce Battle

Anyone else would have already thrown in the towel. But his opponent was Wei Zhao—and who was Wei Zhao? A man whom even the monstrous evil cultivators of the Mountain-Opening stage could not bring to heel. However formidable Leng Rufeng might be, he was still only an expert of the Profound Ascension stage. Would Wei Zhao retreat over a little pressure like this?

Since his opponent would not strike first, Wei Zhao saw no reason to stand on ceremony. His true qi surged through him, and with a single thought he unleashed the Raging Inferno Thousandfold Blast.

In an instant the whole vast arena was sealed tight beneath a sky of raging flame. The earth-shaking detonations that kept bursting forth left even the Xiangyun Academy disciples watching from below exchanging stunned glances. Worthy of a man who could become the Western Isle's consort—he was truly no simple matter.

With the power of the Raging Inferno Thousandfold Blast, an ordinary early Profound Ascension expert would have crumbled. Yet Wei Zhao did not for a moment believe it could pose any real threat to Leng Rufeng. The man was a monster comparable to the late Profound Ascension stage; to think one Raging Inferno Thousandfold Blast could do the trick would be wishful thinking of the wildest kind.

Under the perfect cover of the Raging Inferno Thousandfold Blast, Wei Zhao unhesitatingly employed the Transcendent Butterfly Microstep. His form drifted through the sea of fire like a ghost, flickering and unfixed, so that even if his opponent used his spiritual sense, he could not easily lock on to Wei Zhao's position—after all, the Raging Inferno Thousandfold Blast was quite effective at obstructing spiritual sense as well.

Sure enough, Leng Rufeng stood motionless at the center of the explosions. The Raging Inferno Thousandfold Blast had not so much as scratched him, but it had served its purpose as cover perfectly, allowing Wei Zhao to steal up behind him without the slightest notice.

Amid the ceaseless, heaven-shaking blasts came a low, deep dragon's roar, and a supremely powerful five-element killing aura—now bearing a trace of the Five-Venom Flood Dragon's shadow—shot straight at Leng Rufeng's unguarded back.

It worked! Wei Zhao's spirits soared. Once his five-element killing aura touched flesh, no Profound Ascension expert could hope to walk away unscathed. This was a top-tier killing move inherited from an existence of the Transcendent Sea-Splitting stage; even if Wei Zhao could only imitate a fraction of it, it was still far beyond the power of an expert of this level to withstand.

Yet in the next instant Wei Zhao's heart gave a violent lurch. The rumbling Raging Inferno Thousandfold Blast cut off abruptly, and with it the towering fire intent dissolved into nothing. The whole arena turned to ice and snow, cold enough to congeal the blood and clog the flow of true qi.

Never in his wildest dreams had Wei Zhao expected this. The woman Yang Qianshuang's technique—this man could use it too, and to far greater effect. This world of ice and snow was all but devastating to the functions of the physical body; an ordinary person might well be frozen to death outright. Even Wei Zhao found movement difficult, his strength reduced to half at best. These two really were a matched pair!

But what shocked Wei Zhao most was not that. It was that in his opponent's hand, at this very moment, was clutched his five-element killing aura. The man had caught the five-element killing aura with his bare hand!

"A clever trick, but useless." Leng Rufeng spoke coldly, and in his other hand there abruptly appeared a blade of ice, all but transparent. It swept down in a soundless slash. The five-element killing aura gripped in his hand was sheared cleanly in two, then dissolved into the empty air.

Silence. The whole arena was utterly silent.

Wei Zhao had faced many formidable foes, but an opponent like Leng Rufeng he had never met. Even when he had faced the Old Sect of the Western Mountains, he had been nowhere near as shaken as this.

Facing the Old Sect of the Western Mountains, he had known the gulf in strength was vast, so whatever heaven-defying means they produced had seemed only natural. Leng Rufeng was different. Wei Zhao had fully believed he had a fighting chance—but after witnessing that staggering scene, he knew at once that he had been fooling himself.

In the end, his own cultivation was simply too low. A mere mid Nascent Soul cultivator facing an expert comparable to the late Profound Ascension stage—by any measure it was far too much to ask. If he could win under such conditions, that would be the true abnormality.

Even so, there was no chance Wei Zhao would concede so easily. On the contrary, he was now truly fired up. Some men weaken before the strong; others grow stronger. Wei Zhao was plainly the latter.

Seeing the battle intent surging ever more fiercely in Wei Zhao's eyes, a faint change came over Leng Rufeng's expressionless face. Slowly he raised the ice blade in his hand and leveled it at Wei Zhao. "Yield, or die."

Wei Zhao's pupils contracted sharply. The pressure this man had given off before was terrifying enough, but now, with an ice blade in hand, that incomparable oppressive force had multiplied more than tenfold. It felt like a great mountain pressing down on his head—rebellion was out of the question; to merely keep his feet steady now would mark him as a rare tough specimen indeed.

Blade force! A thought flashed through Wei Zhao's mind. This was the realm every bladesman in legend dreamed of—not an aura conjured from mighty true qi and cultivation, but a blade force born purely of devotion to and understanding of the blade, wrested into being to stand against heaven and earth themselves.

Swordsmen held to the union of man and sword; bladesmen, by contrast, held to carving out a world of their own. Once blade force was achieved, ten thousand men could not stand against it.

Wei Zhao was shaken to the core. He had never imagined his opponent was a monster who had cultivated blade force. No wonder the man could cleave his five-element killing aura in two with a single stroke. How was he supposed to fight this?

Seeing Wei Zhao stubbornly refuse to yield, Leng Rufeng had no patience to wait further. Without another word he casually slashed. The ice blade, a mere few feet long, had grown to a giant blade several zhang in length by the time it reached Wei Zhao's head. Below the arena, Ning Xuefei turned pale with fright—at this rate, Wei Zhao would be split clean in two!

Fortunately, that moment of extreme peril did not last long. When Ning Xuefei peered through her fingers at the arena again, Wei Zhao had already darted more than ten zhang away, and appeared to be safe and sound.

"Interesting." Leng Rufeng regarded Wei Zhao with new respect. No one knew better than he the power of this world of ice and snow; the constraints it placed on the functions of the physical body were, frankly, insane. Combined with the devastating terror of his blade force, let alone a mere Nascent Soul expert—even a Profound Ascension expert of his own level would be unable to move, fit only to be cut down with a single stroke.

Yet to his surprise, the speed Wei Zhao had displayed in that instant was still considerable, seemingly little different from before. That was truly baffling.

How could Leng Rufeng know that Wei Zhao had only been using the Transcendent Butterfly Microstep before, whereas this time, to save his life, he had gone all out with the Transcendent Limit Butterfly Microstep? To sustain sufficient physical function, he had now resorted to an extreme-overload state at tremendous cost—only thus could he guarantee his speed. (To be continued...)