Lord of the Desert

Chapter 523 Infernal Affairs
A powerful punch, carrying the force of fire, was unleashed.

As Yi She retreated several feet, his optical vision directly met his opponent's approaching gaze, while his electromagnetic "vision" also detected a human-shaped sand statue rising behind him.

[Is it the ordinary desolate desert, or the realm of thoughtless spirits?]

He was free from worry and fear, his thoughts as smooth as ice.

It doesn't matter, it's all the same.

The Radiant Heart Spinning Blade reversed its attack, easily severing the sand giant's arm.

For Qi Realm martial artists, manipulating external objects with innate spiritual energy is a common practice, and it is also easy to dismantle it—once the true essence outside the body is impacted, it will lose its organization and will only release energy in the most straightforward way.

A flash of lightning, and the sand seemed to collapse.

Yi She's focus returned to the front lines—the ground trembled, the sand giant strode forward, and the intense heat gathered at his right fist scorched the air into a colorless flame shape.

Holding both Bright Hearts, he unleashed his true essence with all his might, channeling his will into all the lightning-based spiritual energy within a radius of several meters around him, manifesting a blue and white lightning tree taller than a person through the blade.

Fists clashed.

The lightning and fire spiritual energies erupted and clashed, causing half of the white marble bricks to melt and the other half to shatter around the two people.

Suddenly, an unexpected change occurred.

Yi She "saw" that the overturned sand behind him was not blown away by the shock wave. Instead, he pulled out a sharp hammer and used the moment of tension in the struggle to smash it into his lower back.

Hong Fan delivered a series of powerful punches.

Yi She retreated several feet, leaving a trail of blood in his wake, his movements clearly unbalanced.

"The Spirit Without Thought?"

He stood leaning on his knife, his nostrils filled with a metallic stench, half from the ionization of the air and half from the blood.

"Even though I hit him, he's completely unaffected..."

Yi She had naturally collected information about the Wuxiangling, but this thing was too rare and the information was vague. All that was known was that it could manipulate true essence outside the body.

"Yes, not only can it change its moves on its own, but Wuxiangling can also withstand damage and eliminate interference."

Hong Fan slowly approached, his right arm rotating from shoulder to elbow, regaining control from the numbness.

“Apart from the difference in quantity, it is not fundamentally different from the true essence and spirit of the Celestial Realm.”

Five meters away from him, the blood-stained sand hammer slowly rose from the ground, shaping into a tall warrior identical to him.

Exclamations rose from the seven peaks, merging into a muffled buzzing sound.

The electric light rolled across Yi She's body, forcefully soothing the muscles that were still spasming after the blunt injury, and charring the blood vessels and superficial nerves to stop the bleeding and relieve the pain.

In his Thunderous state, he replaces chemical signals with electrical signals, completely overwhelming his basic instincts and gaining absolute control over his body.

To the surprise of the spectators, Hong Fan allowed his opponent to make emergency decisions.

"You don't actually think you're going to win, do you?"

Yi She became increasingly ashamed and angry.

"Since we rarely get to go up to the rooftop, we should make the most of it..."

Hong Fan replied, pressing forward before he could finish speaking.

The sand and gravel were whipped out.

Yi She parried the force with his sword, then lashed the ground with his whip. Amidst the flying dirt and stones, he used the enemy's momentum to slide to the side. Before the blade even touched the sand armor, he could already feel the strong wind behind him.

The sand golems have arrived.

Yi She sheathed his sword, crouched low, and spun around to strike, but out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Hong Fan's backhand slap.

For the first time since the start of the battle, he felt the pace was too fast to keep up with, and he had to roll and dodge.

Yi She rolled close to Hong Fan's body, trying to use his size to block the sand puppet's pursuit.

But things backfired.

The sand puppet, which was accelerating, actually dispersed half of its body on its own initiative, and passed by Hong Fan without any obstruction, throwing a punch by losing its center of gravity.

This punch was unexpected and unavoidable, forcing Yi She to open his palm to receive it, and he was sent flying back several meters before he could dissipate the remaining force.

"Can the Spirit of No Thought simultaneously control two types of True Essence?"

Yi She examined her swollen left hand, her brow furrowed.

In that brief exchange of blows, his palms were severely burned, and his sleeves below the elbows were completely charred and turned to ash.

With a flick of his fingers, lightning flashed, and the pain instantly subsided. On the other side of the arena, the sand puppet, having received replenishment of its true energy from its original body, stood proudly once more, causing the assembled prodigies in the audience to stand in awe.

Compared to other innate martial artists of the same level, its overall combat strength is slightly weaker, and it is far from qualified to compete with Yi She in a one-on-one situation.

However, the sudden addition of such a perfectly coordinated support player in a one-on-one match between players of similar skill levels can have a revolutionary impact on the course of the battle.

"So I was the one who got hurt first...?"

Yi She gazed intently at the two identical sand giants, his arrogance finally vanishing.

“Hong Fan, the wonder of Wu Xiang Ling is beyond my expectations. It is a pity that the outcome was decided beforehand, and it is difficult to yield.”

He held the Heart of Light upright in front of him with both hands. The moment his breath stopped, the electric light swirling around his body and the blade receded simultaneously. When his eyes lit up again, they were a single, bright silver color, indistinguishable from the whites of his eyes.

"The ultimate truth, without interruption."

Yi She chanted softly, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, which quickly evaporated into a thin red line.

"This is a killing technique that a cultivator at the Innate level could never use, but the divine weapon I wield is forged from the remains of a celestial being, so I can use it to my advantage..."

He gently wielded the longsword in his hand, and the Thunderous True Essence covered the blade like a layer of blue liquid film, silent and obedient—a sign that his control over True Essence had reached its limit.

Crouch low, gather your strength.

The sandstorm exploded, extending the shape of the character "一".

Seven meters away, Yi She aimed at Hong Fan's right arm and saw him raise it, releasing the fire jade.

The roar whizzed past my ears, and the strong wind straightened my hair.

As I counted down the milliseconds in my mind, the flames erupted behind me as expected.

In Yi She's "eyes," Hong Fan's brain is displayed as a high-frequency, rhythmic golden light, which is transmitting downwards, activating the heart and left shoulder respectively, and then reaching its peak along the left arm.

The heavy punch came as expected.

With his mind already in place, he slightly deviated from the edge of the fist and slid in to thrust into the elbow.

Honfan Kadon lost his position.

In that instant, Yi She created distance and faced the sand puppet directly.

The Awakening of Insects slashed off both arms.

Hong Fan turned to give chase, but everything on the battlefield was one-way transparent.

Yi She smiled silently, formed a hand seal, and instantly unleashed a lightning strike that struck the sand giant's left knee, interrupting its steps.

In the next instant, the Heart of Light pierced through the Sand Puppet's heart, completely disintegrating it with an excessive amount of Thunderous True Essence.

"Hong Fan, all your struggles are in vain..."

Yi She listened to the wind behind him, casually jumped to the side, and just barely avoided a row of subsonic sand bullets.

For a moment, their moves resembled a pre-written script.

"I wonder if it's just my imagination."

The back-and-forth struggles made Shi Yuanwei anxious.

"The previous few rounds of fighting were less a testament to Yi She's exquisite techniques and more a result of Hong Fan's proactive cooperation?"

"Your feeling is correct."

Ancient meaning returns to a new path.

"'Boundless' is the most renowned super-grade killing technique in the Qi Realm of the Void Thunder Strike Scripture. It is said that it can not only greatly enhance the user's true essence perception and control precision, but also foresee the future."

"What?! Foreseeing the future?!"

Hong Sheng's eyelids twitched violently upon hearing this.

"Naturally, it's not about actually seeing the future."

Gu Yixin explained with a smile.

"Legend has it that the opponent's movements can be judged by reading their 'heart thunder trajectory' and 'electric pulse ripples'..."

During the days of preparation, Hong Fan carefully studied all the publicly available information about the "Void Thunder Scripture," and "Wujian" was very famous, with a lot of related information.

In modern terms, this technique is based on a comprehensive summary of the human body's bioelectric spectrum, combined with extreme electric field induction to predict the opponent's intentions and actions—the former is presented in the QRS complex reflecting the changes in the depolarization potential of the left and right ventricles, while the latter follows the propagation along the membrane following the "peak" and "after" potentials.

Whenever the electromagnetic sensory indicator displays "overshoot," the martial artist can predict the corresponding action.

(End of this chapter)